Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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 […]

Prospero is a dickhead.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

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I‘m tempted to just let the title be my review, but if I want to count this review towards my total, it has to be at least 250 words. I haven’t read this play in ten years. I’ve never seen it performed. It’s never been my favorite, even though I’ve read it several times now. The best parts of it involve several of Shakespeare’s most classic lines: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, […]

“When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.”

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

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This was so good, and I’m very glad I read it. So subtle and skillfully put together. To think about this woman dying at 34, and how many more great pieces of art she could have created. This is why I like to do Read Harder every year, because I probably wouldn’t have gotten around to this without it. This is a three act play that follows the Youngers, a black family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. Mom Lena, son […]

If you knew how your actions affected others, would you change them?

An Inspector Calls and Other Plays by JB Priestley

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An Inspector Calls and Other Plays contains, as you might have guessed, An Inspector Calls as well as Time and the Conways, I Have Been Here Before, and the Linden Tree. Of the collection, An Inspector Calls stands head and shoulders above the rest but they are all of a high standard. Time and the Conways and I Have Been Here Before both deal with time, fate and free will, but of the two I definitely enjoyed the latter the most. The former sees us […]

The Real in the Title Means Nothing

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I always get a smidge nervous reviewing short works and book club choices. This one is both. Exciting times friends! My immediate takeaway when I finished was that it may be too absurdist for me. But that doesn’t quite grasp the idea I was after. From my limited experience with Stoppard, he is always playing with words, playing with meaning, playing with intent, and has no problem (perhaps prefers) to have his characters speaking at cross purposes. What that does to a reader is leave […]

Book Announcement: #CannonBookClub Reads a Play

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To quote a literary legend “The play’s the thing!” and we’ll be reading and discussing Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound on Wednesday December 13, 2017. I have posted Discussion Topics post as a reminder to finish up and food for thought. As in Book Clubs past, feel free to visit us here on the group blog for the dedicated post or in our Facebook Cannonball Read Book Chat group where I’ll have even more topics to discuss. Here’s a synopsis of our choice: The ultimate parody of the stage […]



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