Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

On Proust, memory, and relationships

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

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CBR18 BINGO: Left, because this is Julian Barnes’s last novel; ergo, there’s nothing left I’ve always had a difficult relationship with Julian Barnes. Sometimes I read a line and think, “What a genius. No wonder he won the Booker Prize.” Then I read a bit more, and I just feel tired. Departure(s), which Barnes has said is going to be his last book, is a blended novel, comprising elements of memoir, essay, and fiction. This format is what prompted me to realize that, as a […]

Hawthorne & Horowitz go to the movies (sort of)

A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz

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CBR18 BINGO: And, because this is the 6th book in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series Anthony Horowitz is back with another Hawthorne mystery, and the premise this time is that his novel The Word is Murder is being turned into a movie! As you can imagine, this novel has fun skewering the movie biz, including pretentious directors, diva actors, ultra-progressive writers, and cut-throat agents. On the other hand, Horowitz the character is surprisingly chill about the modifications being made to his story, saying, “When a […]

An Interesting Experiment in Meta Fiction

Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar

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In the summer of 1988 a serial killer began stalking the small town of Edgewood, Maryland. Young girls killed and mutilated, their bodies left on display, and zero evidence left behind by the killer. Richard Chizmar, a recent graduate from the University of Maryland, returns home in the middle of the spree just as a curfew has been enacted. As he prepares for his wedding and begins his writing career, he finds himself more entwined with the case than he would have thought possible. Between […]

As Slippery as a Fish

Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish by Richard Flanagan

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“Billy Gould could not escape the growing suspicion that he had become entrapped in a book, a character whose future as much as his past was already written, determined, foretold, as unalterable as it was intolerable. What choice did he have but to destroy that book?”   I’ve saved the most flummoxing book of the year for the last square on the bingo board: a book which involves metafiction and magical realism in convict-era Tasmania. Thanks, Richard Flanagan. Gould’s Book of Fish has a convoluted […]

The final case for Susan Ryeland?

Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz

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CBR 17 BINGO: Red (see cover) Anthony Horowitz is back with what is most likely the last Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pünd mystery. I’m sad to see the series wind down, but how many times can a person get involved with the same franchise to disastrous results without breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief? (This isn’t Jurassic Park for heaven’s sake.) If you’re a fan of Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders, you might be wondering how Horowitz could squeeze another novel out of this premise, what with […]

Giving a voice to the voiceless

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

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“Of arms and the man I sing,” begins Virgil’s Aeneid, though women are pivotal in his story of war and love. Upon one character, Lavinia, hinges the relationships between the Latins and the Trojans, and yet she has no lines at all in the poem and is tellingly described by Virgil as “ripe for marriage.” Ursula K. Le Guin attempts to correct this injustice by retelling the poem through Lavinia’s eyes. Lavinia is an interesting novel in that, not only does Le Guin give voice […]



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