Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Oh, you mean the GANGS of New York

Rogues' Gallery by John Oller

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I was jonesing for a New York City gangster tale last week. I finally started Herbert Asbury’s Gangs of New York but quit when I realize that the book is less glorious embellishment and more fan fiction. Frustrated, I looked for a substitute and then remembered I purchased John Oller’s Rogues’ Gallery on a lark. It aspires to be a corrective to Asbury’s highly fictionalized accounting which was held as a historical standard for years. Oller is more scholarly than smooth but this might scratch the itch if you’re […]

Sinister Shores

Murder By the Sea by Robin Jarossi, David Howard

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Based on the CBS reality show Murder By the Sea, ten murders that took place in various seaside towns and resorts of Britain are recounted in this book. I like true crime, but my medium of choice is podcasts – I very rarely watch it on TV. As such, I have never heard of this show, but the central theme of murder informed by location was one that sounded interesting to me. That the chapters had been derived from episodes of a show was evident […]

Successionary

Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams

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Look, I’m simple: if you bill a book as a “non-fictional Succession,” load it with family drama and a bunch of wannabe Richard IIIs and Lady Macbeths, and put billions of dollars and a major media or financial empire at stake, I’m absolutely going to devour it. This is no exception. As to the quality of the book, it’s fine. Quite good at times. James B. Stewart wrote the magnum opus of these kinds of books in Disneywar and I was kind of expecting that. But it didn’t […]

Jump Up and Feel Down

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

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Reading about the rise and fall of the Sacklers, I kept thinking about the futurism of the 1950s. I had been to Futureland in Disney this past fall and it reminded me how obsessed people were in the post-war world with discovering things that dramatically enhanced life. This isn’t a bad sentiment to have, I suppose. I’d love nothing more than a robot butler to cook my food and clean up after me. But how does one deal with pain? It calls to mind Linda […]

A True Crime Memoir

The Babysitter by Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan

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  Decided to start 2023 off with a bang after listening to an interview of the co-authors on the podcast Tenfold More Wicked. As Liza recounted her childhood story to host Kate Winkler Dawson, my interest was immediately piqued and I borrowed the e-book from the library. Needless to say I burned through this book after 2 nights. The format of the novel is unlike any I have read before, where the author alternates chapter between her childhood growing up in Cape Cod and the story […]

November 2022 Leftovers

The Golden Cage by Camilla Läckberg

Things We Do in the Dark by Jennifer Hillier

The Lost Village by Camilla Sten

The Hot Beat by Robert Silverberg

Your Book, Your Brand: The Step-By-Step Guide to Launching Your Book and Boosting Your Sales by Dana Kaye

Nineteen Seventy Seven by David Peace

The Family Game by Catherine Steadman

The Other Side of Night by Adam Hamdy

Nineteen Eighty by David Peace

Ex Machina, Book Three by Brian K. Vaughan

The Cloisters by Katy Hays

Destroy All Monsters (Reckless, Vol.2) by Ed Brubaker

The Ghost in You (Reckless, Vol.3) by Ed Brubaker

Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar

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A happy and blessed Thanksgiving to all who observe! Here is my list of readings that I got to in November that didn’t merit a longer review… The Golden Cage*** Part 1: Ma’am, wyd? Part 2: Good for her! Part 3: Good for…her? Also, kinda sad. Epilogue: Good for her! This is a good, trashy beach read. I just wish there had been less on Faye’s shady past- which wasn’t filled in well-and more on the machinations to destroy her husband’s business. Also, I’m not […]



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