Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Old School Hollywood with Demon Deals

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

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Holy crap, I want more! Siren Queen is the story of Luli Wei, a star who stole her sister’s name to become famous and became the monster in many films, but also managed to find love and friendship outside the monstrous side of Hollywood. There are elements of this that remind me of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, mainly the narration style and the old Hollywood setting. But do not go into Siren Queen expecting the same story or same kinds of characters. Luli […]

More Than A Body

Mean...Moody...Magnificent!: Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend by Christina Rice

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When reading Karina Longworth’s Howard Hughes book, I came away wanting to learn more about Jane Russell. She seemed like a fish-out-of-water person from the era: a sexpot who rejected the label, a right-wing Christian who stuck to her views, a living contradiction who leaned into her personality. Researching when I was done, I was surprised to find that the only book on Russell was her autobiography, published in the 1980s. Months later, I was at the library and remembered, at last, to pick it […]

When You’re Too Hard Core for Raymond Chandler

Fast One by Paul Cain

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Bingo square – People This noir classic was created when Paul Cain patched together five stories that he had written for the detective magazine Black Mask.  Published in 1933, it soon became famous as the book that was just too hardboiled to be fashioned into a movie.  And seriously, it is, even by today’s standards.  Daaaaamn son. Paul Cain was by then a slippery character in Hollywood.  That was not his real name, nobody was quite sure where he was from (spoiler, Iowa, actually), and […]

This has got to be the most misleading title ever

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Today is June 30th and the end of Pride month. How very fitting that I finished The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo today. This book is queer as hell, and I had no idea going in. I just knew that I loved Daisy Jones and the Six by Reid, and this book came highly praised by friends and Cannonballers alike. I loved nearly every moment of it. This book is told through two main points of view, that of Evelyn Hugo and that of her biographer Monique Grant. […]

Ol’ Hollywood

Windhall by Ava Barry

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Sigh. Why can’t books like this be easier to review? There’s so much to like about Ava Barry’s debut novel Windhall…and so much that grated on my nerves. I really wanted to push this to a charity first-book-4-star review and I just couldn’t. The book kind of feels like the version of the decaying mansion at the center of the story: beautiful and glamorous but uninhabitable and far past its prime. Probably easier with this one to pull out the old good/bad formula: Good: -The book […]

“Everyone loves a beautiful dead girl.”

Windhall by Ava Barry

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Windhall is a novel about Hollywood, the way men treat women, fame, obsession, and Los Angeles. Hailey is an antisocial journalist at a counterculture zine turned blog (I think) in LA. He is obsessed with the decades old murder of a Hollywood star at the home of an infamous director. His obsession weaves in with his own family’s story, as well as the DNA of modern day Los Angeles. It’s hard for him to separate the glamour and allure of the city with the facts, […]



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