Michael Dobbs’ House of Cards was a daily deal not too long ago so I figured I’d see how it compared to the Netflix series through which I am slowly making my way. If you aren’t familiar with Netflix, then you probably live under a rock and have no idea what the show is about. In any case, the novel (apparently the first in a trilogy) from which the show took its ideas, takes place in London, and more specifically in the back rooms and […]
Bookstore Shmookstore
I’m certainly not the first, nor will I probably be the last, CBRer to review Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. That being said, I won’t go on too much about the plot. The book’s been out for quite a few years and garnered some attention on those lists everyone has of MUST READ THIS books. Basically, this young graphic designer in San Francisco, Clay Jannon (I think? His last name is rarely mentioned) finds himself unemployed and desperate. Wandering around the city one afternoon […]
Awesome Lady Spy
Since with CBR6 I dropped the ball and didn’t regularly contribute, I can’t possibly expect regular Cannonballers to recall that I have a penchant for World War II stories, badass ladies, and intrigue. Suffice it to say, I do, so when my book club chose to read Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville I was stoked. While at times tedious, the biography delivers all my jams, in spades! I won’t go into too many of the historical details […]
My first book for CBR7 was a doozie! The second installment in Robert Galbraith’s (ahem, JK Rowling) series on war vet turned private detective Cormoran Strike, The Silkworm, was quite an interesting crime novel. Set in wintry London several months after Strike famously solves the Lulu Landry case (in Cuckoo’s Calling), Silkworm begins with a tired housewife on the hunt for her artistically-temperamented, mildly-successful novelist husband. Naturally this being a mystery series, said husband isn’t missing; he’s dead, and in quite a gruesome way. Cormoran […]