Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About GentleRain

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Your jack of all trades eccentric. Knows a little about a lot and a lot about a little. Tends to mainly read non-fiction (history, true crime, old gossip, etc), SF/F, horror, graphic novels, "genre" books. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: GentleRain's Quick Questions interview.)

GentleRain's Reviews:

“But all’s well that ends well, and if your adventure is successful, all those little problems you had will soon become very funny to you indeed.”

Nell of Gumbling: My Extremely Tiny Forest Adventure by Emma Steinkellner

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This is the charming sequel to the first Nell of Gumbling book. The series takes place in a fairy tale based town, but it’s just normal life for everyone and the focus is more on the power of community and learning positive lessons versus the magical elements. I like this sort of everyday life within a fantasy world, so the setting really works for me, and Emma Steinkellner’s art is perfect. In this volume, Nell is going to do a summer camping course (the Wilderness […]

Three Photobook Reviews

Say, Is This the U.S.A. by Erskine Caldwell & Margaret Bourke-White

The Quake of '89 by News Staff of the San Francisco Chronicle

Earth Angels: Migrant Children in America by Nancy Buirski

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These three books sum up the span of photojournalism pretty well, both in time and stylistically. I am not so much an art photography person, nor someone who likes books of just photographs without captions, even if I am a big fan of the photographer. For me, the captions offer the context that make the image more meaningful to me. Say, is this the U.S.A. is a collaborative tour through the USA in 1941, with Margaret Bourke-White providing some great photographs and Erskine Caldwell writing […]

“One’s house is very important. It is the third and outermost of the shells that encase us.”

Old Madam Yin: A Memoir of Peking Life by Ida Pruitt

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Another book from my Stanford University Press sale haul. Old Madam Yin is a memoir of Ida Pruitt’s friendship with Madam Yin between 1926 and 1938. While there is a sociological and ethnographic lens here, with Pruitt working to explain the workings of Chinese society to a Western audience, the book works more today as a historical glimpse into the beginnings of the destruction of Madam Yin’s way of life, as well as the culture clash between Westerners and the Chinese. Pruitt was born and […]

“If there is any lesson to be learned from the intervention in Afghanistan, it is perhaps the difficulty of learning lessons.”

Losing Afghanistan: An Obituary for the Intervention by Noah Coburn

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I got this through a Stanford University Press sale for a very good deal (they do this sale once a year, I believe, so keep an eye out). Then it sat on a shelf for a while until I finally determined last month to work through the books I got from this sale — the unintended consequences of too good a deal is a bunch of academic books that sit around for a few years. I’m glad that I did finally pick this up because […]

“I suppose one has to have lived in the U.S.S.R. to know what a priceless treasure security is.”

Liberation — Russian Style by Ada Halpern

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My mom suggested I read this and I’m glad she did (she knows me well and this is the sort of book that’s right up my alley). Liberation — Russian Style is short at only 106 pages, but it packs a big emotional punch and really drives home the inhumanity of the forced civilian deportations by the Soviet government during WWII. This is one of those overlooked historical events in the American understanding of the US, I think, but millions of people were forcibly deported, […]

Fun Middle Grade Medieval Action Adventure

Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi

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I’ve been eyeing this book since it came out when I was probably 12 years old but it had never really clicked for me although I have enjoyed all the Avi I’ve read. The time somehow was right this month and I churned through this in short order. I think it was partially because all I was able to read for about two and a half months was reading for grad school and my brain was desperate for something adventurous and straight forward. Crispin: The […]



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