Friday, March 11, 2011

All my Cannonball 1 Reviews

This is more for my own benefit than anything else, but I thought this would be a handy post to refer to when I mention books I've read in the past. These are all the reviews I wrote for the first Cannonball, way back in '08 and '09. It's funny to see how I started out strong with the reviews, then got to around 40 books and I totally deflated. But, in my defense, that was around the time of the coup in Honduras and the nightmare with getting my visa, and writing book reviews was the farthest thing from my mind. Then I just read and read and let the reviews pile up, then just never got around to writing the last 50 or so. How embarrassing. One good thing that might come of this is that I've learned a lesson and won't let the reviews wait too long.

Anyway. There's some good stuff in here, and I had fun putting the list together and reading through some reviews. I like how I go from High-Fallutin' Intellectual Wannabe to Cussing Like a Pirate and Not Really Trying from one review to the next. I'm nothing if not inconsistent.

1. "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger

2. "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer

3. "Why Girls Are Weird" by Pamela Ribon

4. "Everything's Eventual" by Stephen King

5. "Embers" by Sandor Marai

6. "The Witch of Portobello" by Paolo Coelho

7. "On Writing" by Stephen King

8. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini

9. "Night Sins" by Tami Hoag

10. "Guilty As Sin" by Tami Hoag

11. "How to Get Lost" by Amanda Eyre Ward

12. "The Hours" by Michael Cunningham

13. "The First Wives' Club" by Olivia Goldsmith

14. "The Testament" by John Grisham

15. "The Rescue" by Nicholas Sparks

16. "When the Wind Blows" by James Patterson

17. "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" by Gregory Maguire

18. "The Partner" by John Grisham

19. "Hannibal" by Thomas Harris

20. "Marie Antoinette" by Hilaire Belloc

21. "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" by John Berendt

22. "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen

23. "Ain't Gonna be the Same Fool Twice" by April Sinclair

24. "Wicked" by Gregory Maguire

25. "Cry Wolf" by Tami Hoag

26. "Teacher Man" by Frank McCourt

27. "Tiburcio Carias Andino" by Mario Argueta

28. "The Golden Compass" by Phillip Pullman

29. "The Subtle Knife" by Phillip Pullman

30. "The Amber Spyglass" by Phillip Pullman

31. "Black Hawk Down" by Mark Bowden

32. "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen

33. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by DH Lawrence

34. "Walking the Bible" by Bruce Feiler

35. "The House of Spirits" by Isabel Allende

36. "Outlander" by Diana Gabaldon

37. "Dragonfly in Amber" by Diana Gabaldon

38. "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris

39. "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornby

40. "Voyager" by Diana Gabaldon

41. "Bridget Jones's Diary" by Helen Fielding

42. "Drums of Autumn" by Diana Gabaldon

43. "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card

44. "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" by Helen Fielding

45. "The Talisman" by Stephen King and Peter Straub

46. "Rainbow Six" by Tom Clancy

47. "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo

48. "The Fiery Cross" by Diana Gabaldon

49. "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers

50. "The Godfather Returns" by Mark Winegardner

51. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by JK Rowling

52. "The Street Lawyer" by John Grisham

53. "From a Buick 8" by Stephen King

54. "A Breath of Snow and Ashes" by Diana Gabaldon

55. "Airs Above Ground" by Mary Stewart

56. "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" by JK Rowling

57. "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" by JK Rowling

58. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

59. "Jurassic Park" by Michael Crichton

60. "Smith of Wooton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham" by JRR Tolkien

61. "Good Omens" by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

62. "Son of a Witch" by Gregory Maguire

63. "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas

64. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" by JK Rowling

65. "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini

66. "Sex and the City" by Candace Bushnell

67. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" by JK Rowling

68. "The Outsiders" by S. E. Hilton

69. "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman

70. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams

71. "Rage" by Stephen King

72. "The Long Walk" by Stephen King

73. "The Restaurant at the end of the Universe" by Douglas Adams

74. "Roadwork" by Stephen King

75. "The Running Man" by Stephen King

76. "Life, the Universe and Everything" by Douglas Adams

77. :So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish" by Douglas Adams

78. "Persuasion" by Jane Austen

79. "Mostly Harmles" by Douglas Adams

80. "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman

81. "Fire and Hemlock" by Diana Wynne Jones

82. "The Stand" by Stephen King

83. "The Man in the Iron Mask" by Alexandre Dumas

84. "Under the Tuscan Sun" by Frances Mayes

85. "Dolores Claiborne" by Stephen King

86. "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan 'Hack Job' Brown

87. "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold

88. "Dracula" by Bram Stoker

89. "The Langoliers" by Stephen King

90. "The Library Policeman" by Stephen King

91. "To the Nines" by Janet Evanovich

92. " Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham

93. "The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger

94. "The Stranger" by Albert Camus

95. "Cuentos de Eva Luna" by Isabel Allende

96. "Desperation" by Stephen King

97. "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen

98. "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote

99. "Airframe" by Michael Crichton

100. The Brethren by John Grisham

Conclusions: I read a lot of crap there at the end, just desperately trying to make it to 100. But I did! Even if some of the books barely fit the rules. I hope to do much better this year.

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