Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Connecting a community one sock at a time

Magnolia Wu Unfolds it All by Chanel Miller

by Leave a Comment

Magnolia Wu is almost ten. She spends a lot of time at her parent’s establishment, the Bing Qi Ling Bubbles Laundromat. Her loneliness leads to lots of creative thinking: on one wall is her bulletin board of lost socks, lone socks left behind by customers. While new friend and California transplant Iris is visiting, a customer xenophobically Karens out on Magnolia’s mom, and Magnolia nearly throws out her sock wall in a fit of anger. But Iris proposes they start the NYC Sock Detective project, […]

Dashiell Hammett’s Twilight

Already Dead by Charlie Huston

by Leave a Comment

I subscribe to a used book service where you tell the seller a bit about you, and then they send you 1-4 books per month that match your style(s). Since my dark, sad heart loves classic noir, they sent me Charlie Huston’s Already Dead. It’s book one in the Joe Pitt series. Joe Pitt died a long time ago. Sort of. He’s a vampyre (my preferred spelling, by the way) wandering in Manhattan. There’s lots of vampyres in Manhattan. Not only that, but they’ve set up […]

Eighteen minutes. That’s how long you’ve got to hold ’em.

Tanqueray by Stephanie Johnson and Brandon Stanton

by Leave a Comment

Stephanie Johnson became famous later in life via the popular blog, “Humans of New York.” I learned of her a couple of months ago when a vignette of one of her stories showed up in my Instagram feed. It was the story of how she became a dominatrix in 1980’s New York. When I searched for more stories, I learned that she had a memoir titled Tanqueray, which was her burlesque stage name. Stephanie has a distinct voice, and Stanton did a lovely job of […]

Two Writers

We Are Watching by Alison Gaylin

Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle

by Leave a Comment

I finished two books this past week and enjoyed them to varying degrees. One was by a favorite author, another by an author I’ve struggled with in the past. Let’s get to the latter first since I like going in reading order… We Are Watching**** I’ve always felt cold toward Alison Gaylin’s work. She’s a very good writer and yet, there’s an emotional distance in her books that I can’t land with. It’s the same issue I get when watching most Christopher Nolan movies: yeah […]

He Is Your Father

Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right by Walter Mosley

by Leave a Comment

Walter Mosley has two idiosyncratic mystery series set in New York City: Leonid McGill and King Oliver. I’ve written before about my fondness for the McGill series. They’re not significantly different from the King Oliver books but I like how Leonid is a former crime fixer who is trying to do right in a neo-surrealist Manhattan. Oliver’s story is interesting but I don’t find the character as compelling. That changed a bit with this one. Amidst several plots, King has to try and find his […]

Irish Goodbye

Everybody Dies by Lawrence Block

by Leave a Comment

When I first read Everybody Dies a few years ago, I found it disappointing. Matt partnering with his gangster friend Mick Ballou sounded like fun but the execution was meh. Block used it as an excuse to kill off a lit of auxiliary characters from previous books, while the killer himself wasn’t especially interesting and I didn’t feel like I understood Ballou’s character more than I already did. So I wasn’t really jazzed to go back to it for my Scudder re-read, which is almost complete. But […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo