Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“My Happily Ever After was a strand of strung-together happy-for-nows, extending back not to just a year ago, but to thirty years before.”

Beach Read by Emily Henry

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Beach Read is an odd example of a charming romance that I liked a lot, even though I found that I didn’t much like the two main characters. Romance novelist January is reeling — her father died, her boyfriend broke up with her, and she found out (AT HER FATHER’S FUNERAL) that her parents’ marriage wasn’t the perfect love story that she always imagined. She has a book deadline coming up, but she has no ideas and nowhere to live, so she moves into her […]

“Insidious, these false versions of superiority and ease we project onto other families: how often they blind us to the surer comforts of our own.”

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger

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Holy hell. Did this book make me forget about quarantine and the hell that is our lives in this country right now. I guess there’s nothing better for misery than reading about people that have it worse than you, and that they have no one to blame but themselves. This book was insane. I hated pretty much every single character (INCLUDING CHILDREN), and yet couldn’t put it down. From the opening quote, I knew I was in for a ridiculous story: There is so tantalizing […]

“Hard truths can drive people apart. But great art can bring them back together.”

The Editor by Steven Rowley

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I am certainly not having any trouble with reading right now. I’ve read some absolutely amazing (and some that were just meh) books since March, mostly thanks to this group and to the good folks over at One More Page Books. They deliver! But writing has been a challenge. After a full day of editorial work, I just don’t want to sit down with my laptop and write. Even when I’ve read the most amazing book and want the whole world to know about it. […]

Come for the gorgeous book. Stay for the page-turning mystery.

I Killed Zoe Spanos by Kit Frick

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Reader, this book is, without a doubt, the single most beautiful hardcover I have ever seen. Just look at those blue pages! Absolutely stunning. I admittedly bought this book simply because it was so pretty…and then, Cannonball friend Karen McManus tweeted about what a great mystery it was, and into the vacation reading pile it went! This story starts near the end: a young woman named Anna turns herself in to police in a small Hamptons summer town, confessing to the murder of a missing […]

“Was there ever a time you thought – I am doing this on purpose, I am f*cking up and I don’t know why.”

May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes

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I think you can tell a lot about a person based upon what kind of books they give as gifts. The world is made up of the following types of book gifters: Those who just walk blindly into a bookstore or onto Amazon to buy a last minute gift, not quite sure if what they bought is good or not, or if you’ll like it or not, but it looked popular or shiny. Those who try to get everyone to read their favorite book, even […]

When Jason Mantzoukas says he’s obsessed with a book, you better believe I’m going to read it.

All You Need is Kill by Yoshitoshi Abe, Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Takeshi Obata

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki, Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

The Case of the Missing Men by Kris Bertin, Alexander Forbes

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I’m a big fan of the graphic novel. I will fight anyone who doesn’t think spending time with a graphic novel counts as reading — for any reading level from elementary to adult. It counts. Since we started self-distancing, I’ve read three amazing — and so, so, so very different — graphic novels. The first, All You Need is Kill, is probably the most famous of the bunch. The inspiration for the Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt movie, Edge of Tomorrow (great movie, terrible title), AYNIK tells […]



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