Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Nuns and Prostitutes

Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

A Time to Scatter Stones by Lawrence Block

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I knocked out two quick books in the last day, neither of which won me over. Mariette in Ecstasy Judging by other reviews of this book, it appears as if I’m taking a rare middle ground stance. I thought the prose was beautiful and the scene descriptions lush and full. I enjoyed several individual pages. But with a big cast of characters and a central one the writer makes intentionally mysterious, none of it resonates. Plotting is marginal at best. It just lurches from one […]

This Time, It Stuck

City of Margins by William Boyle

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This is the third William Boyle book I’ve tried. I still can’t get past the first 50 pages of Gravesend, as I found the characters to be uninteresting. The Lonely Witness was enjoyable enough but kind of a mess. Boyle, like George Pelecanos, writes character-driven crime tales that focus on their distinct urban neighborhoods. I always feel like I should enjoy both of their books more than I do. They always feel like I’m dropping in the middle episode of a well-produced television show that I’m unfamiliar with. […]

A Twofer

The Night and the Music by Lawrence Block

Top of the Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner

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I knocked out two books over the weekend, both good enough in their own ways.   The Night and the Music 4 stars I’ve never really liked short stories but I like Matthew Scudder and, aside from a novella, this is all that I have left to get from his tale. And I enjoyed each story on its own in some way. The mystery ones were fun but the ones where we see Scudder’s humanity are often better. I do wish the Mick Ballou ones were longer […]

Last Call

A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block

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I know there’s a book of short stories and a novella to read but this is about as fitting of a conclusion to the Matthew Scudder saga as any. Block’s novel is a throwback to Scudder in the early days of his sobriety, and like his previous throwback novel When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, this too feels like a self-contained story and not an author trying to do a cash-grab prequel rife with easter eggs. In this one, Matt is struggling with his sobriety almost as much […]

Pulp Fiction

The Serialist by David Gordon

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Back in the day, I’m talking the 20s-50s, writers used to make their bread by writing pulp tales on the side while working on their main works. They would release the former under pseudonyms. Hard boiled mysteries, campy science fiction, erotica, plenty of great writers plied their trade this way. Lawrence Block wrote dozens of trashy erotic novels under a variety of names before transitioning to mainstream mystery fare. The Serialist is a tribute to that form of writing and for that, I almost love the […]



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