Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About AnnaCollier

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Long time reader, first time reviewer. Hoping to write one of these book thingies myself one of these days.

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The Ant and The Grasshopper Can Be Friends

Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett

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I was inspired to pick up Ann Patchett’s memoir Truth and Beauty: A Friendship after reading her essay These Precious Days, which was recently published in Harper’s magazine. The two works run in parallel, both telling the stories of Patchett’s friendship with someone whose life is arguably more interesting (and certainly more dramatic), who is sick, and who Patchett helps through that illness. Truth and Beauty follows the friendship between Patchett and the writer Lucy Grealy for nearly twenty years.  They attend the same college […]

I Just Wanted a Nice Soothing Book about Murder

The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth

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Like many people, this year I’ve been more than usually interested in books that are comforting, but of course what feels comforting is different for different people – along with Jane Austen and Barbara Pym, for me one of the most soothing types of book are murder mysteries. I like the predictable structure, the ultimate triumphing of good over evil (all too rare in real life), and seeing the ways that different authors stretch and interpret the standard ideas of the genre. Unfortunately for me, […]

Ask A Manager (And some questions you might not even know to ask)

Ask a Manager: How to Navigate Clueless Colleagues, Lunch-Stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work by Allison Green

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Allison Green is best known as the author of the popular career advice website Ask A Manager. The online column has a lot of basic practical advice about how to find a job, keep a job, manage people, and deal with workplace conflicts.  There are also lots of stories about workplace drama, including colleagues who steal your lunch and bosses who tape employee’s mouths shut during meetings if they don’t like the ideas being shared.  Unsurprisingly, she’s decided to turn some of the lessons she […]

The risks and rewards of a life spent in public service

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

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On the surface, Michael Lewis’s The Fifth Risk is a book about the failures of the Trump administration.  This is why I resisted reading it for a long time, even after it was recommended to me, and even though I like Michael Lewis’s writing in general (I am setting aside the satirical(?) essay in which he gave pointers to men on how to get your wife to give up her high-status career so that she would have more time to pay attention to you, that […]

An abundant world of recipes, most of which I’ll never cook

Vegetable Kingdom by Bryant Terry

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Bryant Terry’s 2020 cookbook Vegetable Kingdom: The Abundant World of Vegan Recipes presents vegan dishes from a variety of culinary traditions, with a particular emphasis on ingredients and flavors featured in African and African-American cooking.  There are a lot of things to like about Vegetable Kingdom.  I agree with Terry’s idea that plant-based eating has many health and environmental benefits, and I liked that the recipes didn’t fall back on the common assumption that vegetarian recipes must feature a central protein (like tofu or seitan) […]



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