Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Shorts

The Didomenico Fragment by Amor Towles

The Gentlemen from Peru by Andre Aciman

On Blueberry Hill by Sebastian Berry

Good Enemy by Yilong Liu

The Snowman by R.L. Stine

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa

Dusk and Other Stories by James Salter

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The Didomenico Fragment This story by Amor Towles takes place all in New York City, with Brooklyn being posed almost as a foreign country. The narrator is an aging art critic and scholar who was recently in possession of a small fragment of a Renaissance masterpiece. He’s approached by an art dealer who asks him about selling the fragment, but he laments that he sold it years ago. This leads to an idea. Early in the story he talks about how being retired, even comfortably, […]

Did they use Monsters Ink to write this?

Why Did the Monster Cross the Road? by R. L. Stine

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When you have two powerhouse writers and illustrators like R. L. Stine and Marc Brown, you figure you will have a homerun out of the park hit. Um. Sorry, not this time. Oh, I am not saying Why Did the Monster Cross the Road? was not good, it just was not a huge win for me. Some of the jokes were amusing (Why did the Monster cross the road? To bite someone on the other side) but not all of them (What did the monster […]

The Perfect Date

The Perfect Date by R.L. Stine

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Honestly this ending was top-notch. Reminds me a bit of Tales from the Crypt honestly. I was not expecting it and I thought it was cleverly done. Sometimes i forget that R.L. Stine besides doing tons of teen horror, liked to play around with twist endings. Some of his Fear Street books did not end on a “happy” note. I liked the characters in this one and I was wrong about who the mysterious girl was and how she came about.

The New Evil

The New Evil by R.L. Stine

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Bless. There’s a point in this book when you want to shake Corky, Debra, and Kimmy. And I just shook my head. But honestly though, most of the book works. I do love that when I think of Christmas these days, my first thought goes to crazed killers though. Reading R.L. Stine as a teen will do that to you. This is the fourth book in the Fear Street Cheerleaders series. Just a continuation of the prior installments with Corky and her friends trying to […]

A cool collaboration of thriller writers and characters

Face Off by David Baldacci

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This is the second collaboration audiobook I’ve borrowed and read from my library.  I got into it because of my buddy Michael Connelly.  If you read my previous review that I just posted, you’ll know that maybe he’s not my buddy after all, but Harry Bosch is.  Conveniently, Harry is in this book! The wording on Goodreads calls this “an unprecedented collaboration”, which sounds very grand.  I didn’t really get it until I looked at all the authors involved and listened to the intro.  Apparently […]

Later that summer, when Mrs. Penmark looked back and remembered, when she was caught up in despair so deep she knew there was no way out…

The Bad Seed by William March

Dracula's Guest and Other Stories by Bram Stoker

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James

The Dare by RL Stine

The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson

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The Bad Seed – 3/5 Stars The book about a bad kid hurting and killing other people, and the questions around what makes her tick. I guess I think I have seen the movie of this years ago, but other than “bad kid” I don’t recall much of it. The book dives into the psychology and especially the genetics of the questions of “bad kid” in ways that I imagine are pretty early for the genre. So this is the book that sort of started […]



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