Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


To Vigil the Ante

Even the Wicked by Lawrence Block

Revelation by CJ Sansom

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Just as with Trump’s election last month dovetailing into subjects I read, the recent shooting death of healthcare CEO Brian Thompson by a vigilante killer coincided with me reading two consecutive books on vigilante justice. Going to review both vis-a-vis how they speak to the moment. Even the Wicked Growing up, vigilante justice was always right wing coded. Dirty Harry. Death Wish. I still remember the popular “Beer For My Horses” song in which Willie Nelson and Toby Keith talk about public hangings and “putting […]

Do You Guys Ever Think About Death?

A Long Line of Dead Men by Lawrence Block

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I usually don’t take a long post for my Scudder re-reads as most are summarized compared to what I originally wrote about them. But I wanted some extra space to explore this one. I’ve noticed that post-Eight Million Ways to Die, Lawrence Block’s Scudder plots have become weaker. That’s fine with me; Block’s not bad at plotting but it’s not his strong suit and I’ve come to see these more as hang out novels than Christie-type whodunnits. So I wasn’t looking forward to this one […]

Hot eventually gets boring, but funny never does.

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld

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People are way freakier than we acknowledge. Attraction has to do with so many things besides appearance. Hot eventually gets boring but funny never does. ― Curtis Sittenfeld, Romantic Comedy Another of my pet peeves is that the female characters used to be all sort of cutesy, like having flour on their nose after they baked cookies and not knowing it. And now they’re all a mess, like waking up really hungover and getting fired. I want to create characters who aren’t flawless but also […]

Early Fall Leftovers

To Start A War: How the Bush Administration Took Us Into Iraq by Robert Draper

The Travelers by Chris Pavone

A Walk Among the Tombstones by Lawrence Block

Dark Fire by CJ Sansom

The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation by Robert Rand

Stasi Child by David Young

The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

The Devil Knows You're Dead by Lawrence Block

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I’ve read some interesting stuff lately and I wish I had made more time to document it but life gets in the way that life sometimes does. Not all bad, just life. To Start A War**** I had a long thing here about connecting this to the 2024 election but I don’t want to talk current electoral politics on here, at least the specifics of them. A good book if you want to know the intelligence (ha) perspective of how we wound up in a […]

Woman, Mother, Interpreter, Spy

A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe

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I knew early on this was not going to be the book I expected and I mean that in a complimentary sense. I thought this would be a cozy-esque female housewife in the 50s using her wiles to navigate Manhattan cocktail parties and deduce who may or may not be a Soviet sympathizer. There’s nothing cozy about this, however. It’s a raw, intriguing look at the perils of motherhood for women in the 1950s, with a spy story tacked on in the background. The espionage […]

July-August 2024 Leftovers

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

Confucius for Christians: What and Ancient Chinese Worldview Can Teach Us about Life in Christ by Greg A. Ten Elshof

Lucky At Cards by Lawrence Block

A Dance at the Slaughterhouse by Lawrence Block

Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK by Gerald Posner

Doing the Devil's Work by Bill Loehfelm

The Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Leta McCullough Seletzky

The Third Bullet by Stephen Hunter

Burning Angel by James Lee Burke

The Queen City Detective Agency by Snowden Wright

Poetic Justice by Andrea J. Johnson

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Because I’ve been posting most of my reviews due to Bingo, I haven’t kept up with the leftover ones until now. Hope everyone had  a good summer. It’s my least favorite time of year but this one wasn’t so bad. Heartsick***: I took this book too seriously when I tried to read it the first time. I relaxed and enjoyed the ride the second. Goofy fun, nothing more. Brief Answers to the Big Questions****: I do enjoy listening to Hawking’s desire to push the boundaries […]



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