Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Older, but still beautiful

After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman

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After I’m Gone – 3/ 5 Earlier this year, I read a Patricia Cornwell novel that supposedly takes place in Richmond. But I don’t recognize the Richmond in that book at all, even after living in the city for six years. I lived in Baltimore for one year, taught in a school there, watched through The Wire a few times, and go back periodically for various reasons. This book takes place in a Baltimore I recognize. This Baltimore has suburbs, it has neighborhoods and people […]

I wish I liked the characters more

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cbr10bingo… Underrepresented I really wish I liked the main character more.  I picked this audiobook (in CD form) up from the library on a whim.  The cover looked cool, and the story sounded interesting.  I’m always up for a murder mystery with a dash of hidden identities. The main character is Polly / Pauline.  She starts out by abandoning her daughter and husband on their beach vacation and driving to Delaware.  I don’t know if this was the point, but I didn’t like her right […]

Perfectly fine, but not for me

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Inspired by other Cannonballers, I wanted to expand my horizons a little bit. So this one isn’t something I normally would have read, but it was just fine. I don’t read a lot of (plain? regular? non-genre?) fiction, where it’s just “this happened and then these people did this and then some more life stuff.” So while reading this book about a woman who escapes an abusive husband and then a second less-scary but also-unpleasant husband, going about making a new life for herself, I […]

Surprise Idris Elba is the Best Idris Elba

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I know Laura Lippman is quite a successful writer, but I’m the only person I know who reads her work, so let’s start here: if you haven’t already, you need to read Laura Lippman. She’s one of the best crime writers currenly out there and her series of books focusing on accidental PI Tess Monaghan is very well-suited for binge reading. I once managed two and a half in one day. Also, Lippman’s married to David ‘The Wire’ Simon, which I normally wouldn’t bring up, […]

The sum of our experiences influences all

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(This post original appear on Glorified Love Letters.) The holes in our lives require energy. Everything after must be arranged around that absence, and that effort often continues the devastation. In After I’m Gone, Laura Lippman takes the disappearance of one shady businessman, Felix Brewer, and follows the repercussions on his wife, daughters, and mistress. Facing a decade of jail time, Felix had his mistress, Julie Saxony, sneak him out of town on July 4, 1976. Ten years later, almost to the day, Julie disappears […]



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