#SoShiny!

A new chapter for a brilliant piece of crime journalism

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

November 30, 2018 by KimMiE" Leave a Comment

CBR 10 Bingo: So Shiny! Bingo #3! On April 24, 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested and charged with eight counts of first-degree murder by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department. Santa Barbara County would soon follow with four additional murder charges. The man widely known as the Golden State Killer, thought to be responsible for at least 13 murders and over 50 rapes spanning the 1970s and 80s, had finally been caught. No doubt the families of the victims felt some degree of comfort and relief at the arrest. Additionally, the friends and families of late journalist Michelle McNamara celebrated […]

11/30/2018 KimMiE"'s CBR10 Review No:29 |

Our culture might be in jeopardy and I still had to make the damn pun

Planet Funny by Ken Jennings

October 8, 2018 by octothorp 1 Comment

Bingo entry 4 – my “so shiny” book is appropriately from Ken Jennings, because he’s now in the “I’ll buy a book about ladders if they wrote it” category for me. After having read Because I Said So, Maphead, and my favorite, Brainiac – a book about his Jeopardy experience and the popularity of trivia that includes actual trivia questions. Be still my heart – I’ll read anything he writes, much less something as attuned to my own interests as a book about how humor impacts our culture. So naturally when I saw this at the bookstore I didn’t want […]

10/8/2018 octothorp's CBR10 Review No:43 |

“We still think just because it could be worse, that’s enough.”

Sweet Fruit, Sour Land by Rebecca Ley

October 3, 2018 by tillie Leave a Comment

Sweet fruit, sour land is a dystopian tale of two friends as they meet at lavish parties in London. Both of them are poor, living on food rations and have only been invited due to their skills; Jaminder plays the piano and Mathilde is a skilled seamstress. Both of them are strangers as immigrants to England, but also to this high society. At these parties they are exposed not just to unfamiliar foods and lifestyles, but to a much more sinister realization that the rich people don’t actually know what they’re doing and just consuming as much as possible before […]

10/3/2018 tillie's CBR10 Review No:34 |

If they make a movie of this one, I hope it also has Tim Daly in it.

My Ex-Life by Stephen McCauley

September 11, 2018 by scootsa1000 4 Comments

Way back in the olden days (the 1990s, gasp!) there was a little book called The Object of My Affection about a kind of fat and lonely girl who falls in love with her gay best friend while she’s pregnant and they decide to raise the baby together, and then life gets in the way, etc. Everybody read it, I think it was mandatory book club fodder at the time, even though I’m not sure anyone really loved it, or really even liked it. They even made a movie about it, with Jennifer Aniston as the fat and lonely girl […]

9/11/2018 scootsa1000's CBR10 Review No:34 |

“The Power of Words […] They Hooked into Invididuals and Wormed Through Generations.”

The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin

August 17, 2018 by Lisa Bee 1 Comment

I am but one of a number of Cannonballers who have read The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin so far this year! And for the most part I enjoyed it, as I know some others did. Though I think the front half really got me more so than the latter half, which is not to say that things don’t all come together and create a beautiful story, but I think it really boils down to feeling more of a connection with some of the characters whose points of view are focused on earlier on. The Immortalists tells the story of four […]

8/17/2018 Lisa Bee's CBR10 Review No:42 |

emmalita on “At this point, I think if you’re being silent, you’re making a choice and taking a side.”Added to my list!
emmalita on Will this be a review of this book or a review of my Episcopalian conversion? Stay tuned.What a powerful and intimate review. I was raised without church or religious community. The church going I did with extended family as a child...
Alexis Dubief on Loving the IAD Series RereadAm fully loving this podcast and it's been a welcome breather from Pod Saves America (which I also love but is crushing my soul a...
A. Monroe on Post-apocalypse with a political agendaOh sad little liberals whining about a book that doesn't tow the liberal narrative. Don't we have enough liberal authors for you snowflakes? That nut...
tillie on “…a duty, out of sheer cussedness, not to disappear completely, simply to ease the conscience of the rest.”Interesting! I read an article about her some time ago that raised some questions about her: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/26/a-decade-lived-in-the-dark I think it's really interesting that the book...