Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About faintingviolet

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A reader and caffeine addict who consumes all sorts of books, some just more frequently than others. Your CBR Book Club Maven with over a decade of Cannonballing experience I believe in the beauty that comes from a common goal of reading, reviewing, and discussing. Also, Fuck Cancer. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: faintingviolet's Quick Questions interview.)

faintingviolet's Reviews:

“If you know where to look for it and how to look at it, life is marvelous.”

Seward Johnson: A Life in Public Art by Seward Johnson, Barry Raine

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I’m in a reading slump. I have great books at home staring at me, waiting for me to be in the mood for them and so far, nothing – for weeks now. I’ve been marathoning my way through procedurals on various streaming services instead. But, a work project meant that I *had* to read a book so I’m hoping that getting it done and reviewed will help get me out of this slump. My organization is hosting 10 works by sculptor Seward Johnson this summer/fall […]

“her wounds came from the same source as her power”

The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich

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Poetry is a genre that I have a terrible time reviewing but in my personal quest to keep reading the genre – and not give up on it – I find myself trying to about once a year. The Dream of a Common Language is the first one of 2023 for me (I have at least one other poetry collection on my TBR for the year) and while I’ve known about its existence since I read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild back in 2012, it took a […]

“It’s a strange state of vacillating between having our shit together and feeling less and less like we give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks.”

Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis by Ada Calhoun

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Why We Can’t Sleep is a book about Gen X Women and how mid-life is affecting them. Why then, am I a Millennial lady reading it? Because as someone who just turned 40 I often find that I identify more with things that are defined as Gen X as opposed to Millennial (the accepted year bracket for Gen X is 1964-1980, but there are models that have put it as late as 1984). I’m like many other millions of people existing on the boundaries of […]

“Art thieves steal more than beautiful objects; they steal memories and identities. They steal history.”

Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert Wittman, John Shiffman

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Sometimes professional curiosity places books on my to read list, and that’s certainly how Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures ended up there. While I don’t work in an art museum something that remains a point of interest for me from my days in grad school is the world of stolen and looted art and its recovery. Historical objects can fall into this category easily (and represent a good portion of the cases covered in Priceless) but art and antiquities […]

For the love of great romcoms

From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy by Scott Meslow

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I love romantic comedies. It’s the same reason I love Romance novels, I’m sure. There’s a joy in knowing that the end of the story is going to be happy, and that you’ll be treated to laughs along the way. They are my re-charge kind of story. When I saw Ellesfena’s review last year I plunked Scott Meslow’s From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy on my to read list. When putting in my library requests this […]

“Not to be devastated by my mistake, but instead to be motivated. He spoke to me with the quality one often encounters in truly wise people—forgiveness.”

Spare by Prince Harry

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I had no intention of reading Prince Harry’s memoir. Until I did. I should have known I’d cave, I’m a sucker for memoirs. There’s something about hearing a person’s story in their own words, particularly if that story is contested in some way, as Prince Harry’s has always been. What Spare is, at its core, is a person reckoning with the way in which they were raised, and the very real ways grief and trauma informed their experience of the world. That is the piece […]



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