Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Quick breezy thriller

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

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Hannah is a newly married thirty-something year old, still smitten with her husband Owen, and largely loving their life in the Sam Francisco Bay Area. They live on a houseboat in Sausalito and she spends her days making hand turned custom wooden furniture while Owen works for an up and coming tech start up in the city where he is the right hand to the CEO. The only friction is between Hannah and Bailey, Owen’s daughter from a previous marriage, who has yet to warm […]

They’re Out!

Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof

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Read as part of CBR14Bingo: Scandal. The 1919 World Series was scandalized by eight members of the Chicago White Sox agreeing to throw it as part of a gambling conspiracy.  Bill James is a legend among baseball fans. His greatest rep is as the Analytics Guy but my first taste of his work was his text on the Hall of Fame, in which he critiques the process by which people enter. James devoted a chapter to baseball’s most famous banned people: Pete Rose and Shoeless […]

“You ever see somebody ruin their own life?/ His poor wife.”

The Scandalous Hamiltons: A Gilded Age Grifter, a Founding Father's Disgraced Descendant, and a Trial at the Dawn of Tabloid Journalism by Bill Shaffer

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CBR 14 Bingo: Scandal The yellow papers screamed scandalous headlines in this case of stabbings, baby trafficking, and mysterious deaths. When Ray Hamilton’s wife is arrested for stabbing the family’s wet nurse, a great deal of scandalous truth comes out – namely, that the child is not his, nor hers. I have not seen that seminal musical Hamilton, but I had read the doorstopper of a book it was based on. While I knew all about the successes and scandals of Alexander Hamilton’s life, I had […]

More

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Frog and Toad - Collected Stories by Arnold Lobel

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J Gaines

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CBR14Bingo – Question: Why are so many Americans obsessed with this book (especially Libertarians and Sovereign Citizens) Common Sense – This is one of those books whose main ideas and arguments I ostensibly know through cultural osmosis. If I had ever read it before, I am less sure, but I have taken a handful of early American classes, so maybe. One of the prevailing ideas that came to me as I read this and thought more about why it holds such a special place in […]

April 2022 Leftovers

Batman, Volume 3: Death in the Family by Scott Snyder

DC: The New Frontier, Volume 1 by Darwyn Cooke

Batman: Curse of the White Knight by Sean Gordon Murphy

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year-Secret City by Scott Snyder

Chances by Jackie Collins

Batgirl, Volume 1: Batgirl of Burnside by Cameron Stewart

Batman, Volume 5: Zero Year-Dark City by Scott Snyder

Sonny: The Last of the Old Time Mafia Bosses, John "Sonny" Franzeze by S.J. Peddie

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch

Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman

Call Me a Cab by Donald Westlake

Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen

The Bouncer by David Gordon

Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbø

Tough Luck: Sid Luckman, Murder, Inc., and the Rise of the Modern NFL by R.D. Rosen

Concourse by S.J. Rozan

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Here are the books I read in April that didn’t merit a full review… Batman, Vol. 3: Death in the Family **** Reading a Batman-v-Joker comic is perfect for April Fools Day. I loved Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls run but wasn’t sure how I’d feel about him doing a Joker story combined with the extended Batman Family (which I’ve never been interested in). But this is a good story, a creepy one that continues to burnish Snyder’s credentials on this series. DC: The New Frontier, Volume […]

terrific writing about terrible things

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

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Trigger Warning: please read the tags before deciding to read this review and/or book. If you feel that you can read this book, then you must. If you feel that you cannot, I will pass no judgement. Perhaps you have heard of the drama surrounding this release. American Dirt was climbing the charts and dominating the controversy  conversation when My Dark Vanessa tip-toed in and threw a hat into the ring. There was an implication of plagiarism from a woman who wrote a memoir about being groomed and […]



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