Cannonball Read 11

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The Ghosts of Anti-Semitism Haunt Holland Through Soccer

Ajax, The Dutch, The War by Simon Kuper

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Read for Cannonball Run Bingo. Category: White Whale. The World Cup was on this past summer and anytime I see it, I’m inclined to read more books about soccer. I’m a big sports fan but my interest in soccer really only begun about 12 years ago when, bored out of my mind for the summer of 2006, I watched the World Cup fastidiously. Soccer is now perhaps my fourth favorite sport after baseball, football, and basketball and I’m wearing a New York City FC shirt in anticipation of the game tonight. I’m also a history junkie, particularly World War II. […]

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8/4/2018 | Post by

Throwing a kitten out a window was only a warning shot.

Moonglow by Michael Chabon

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Halfway through Moonglow, I caught myself with my hand over my mouth, trying to keep my breath inside my body because the prose was so exceptionally beautiful. I had my worries before reading this book. I have only recently discovered Chabon, and have only otherwise read The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which was so stunning that it made me want to punch something. There is a lot of hype surrounding Moonglow, and even I only got it by accident from the library on a strict, one week-only, no renewals loan, because it’s such a hot commodity. What if it’s a waste […]

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4/29/2017 | Post by

Then we shall plumb the very heart of this mountain and eat it.

Library of Souls: The Third Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

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In “Library of Souls,” the final book in the “Peculiar Children” series, I was finally, to my great joy, surprised. The characters continued to be predictable to me, but the plot took some really exciting twists and turns down some very imaginative paths that I couldn’t have seen coming, but were well-laid-down-for in the first two books. This was a satisfying and thrilling end to a series that I really enjoyed reading, even if it did also lay me low with a whole bunch of despair and fear. I’m not going to share much of the plot here, because third […]

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12/16/2016 | Post by

Do you ever find yourself climbing into an open grave during a bombing raid and just wish you’d stayed in bed?

Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

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“Hollow City” is the second book in the “Peculiar Children” series, picking up immediately where the first book left off without much catch-up exposition. As I continued reading the series, my feelings got darker and more desperate, in line with the experience of the characters. There is very little hope or joy in Jacob Portman’s journey. He is a young man who answers the call, and then just plugs away at all the minutiae of being a hero. It’s not that it’s a chore to read. The action is very, well, active, and the “peculiarities” (which is to say, not […]

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12/16/2016 | Post by

Males lack the seriousness of temperament required of persons with such grave responsibilities.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

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I swore that I would read this book well in advance of the film release this fall, and then I did not do it in time, and still have not yet seen the film, despite it being way up my alley. But I have finally read the book series, and so I have fulfilled half of this pop culture obligation, and I’m now… conflicted. I was prepared to adore the series. And, if I’m being honest, I couldn’t stop reading it. It had a lot of lean in and gasp moments. It almost gave me nightmares, and definitely contributed to […]

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12/16/2016 | Post by

A little pretentious, a lot bizarre

The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville

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Hoo boy. There is a LOT going on in this one. It’s Paris, World War II. The Nazis are trying their best to occupy the city, but it’s a little difficult, because some mystical bomb went off in a café, and now there are creatures (manifestations, or ‘manifs’) from Surrealist paintings and poems walking around the city, casually eating or dismembering Parisians and Nazis alike. Tables with wolf heads, puddles in the street with carnivorous plants living in them, giant stone statues walking around bashing things in, and incomprehensible ‘exquisite corpses.’ If that wasn’t weird enough, the Nazis have opened […]

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11/18/2016 | Post by

A really good read, but I don’t get all the fuss.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

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This was a really good book on a lot of levels: 1. Good as historical fiction. Excellent particularly because we get POV characters on both sides of the conflict. 2. Good as literary fiction (at least, according to my standards). I prefer my lit-fic to be on the accessible side, and not to focus exclusively on middle-aged white man problems. But it’s also got extra levels if you want to go digging. 3. Good as writing, in the sense that the sentences strung one after another make sense and their stylistic construction adds to the story. 4. Good as character […]

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9/1/2015 | Post by

A Serial Killer Haunts Post-WWII Italy

The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian

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Bojhalian takes us on a visit to Italy’s beautiful Tuscany during one of the most horrifying periods in that country’s history, when the German occupation had splintered the nation between the resistance, the collaborators, and the majority caught in between who mostly struggled to survive without selling their souls to the devil. But beyond a thought-provoking examination of choices and consequences under wartime conditions, Bojhalian also throws us into the middle of a hunt for a serial killer 10 years after the war’s end, a killer who is literally ripping the hearts out of members of the once-noble Rosati family […]

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8/18/2014 | Post by


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