Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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I'm left-handed! (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Halbs's Quick Questions interview.)

Halbs's Reviews:

Good, Old-Fashioned Excitement

Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford

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Before getting into the review proper, I’d like to mention that my buddy L gave me Radio Girls at book swap we had at my former office. It was pretty fun – everyone at our place of business brought in some books to swap or give away during a random lunch break. It’s special to have your friends’ copies of books, and in some cases even their marginalia or notes inside of books. So, I’d recommend having a lunch break book swap. [Very minor spoilers […]

“There’s no uniformity in the panoply of butts.”

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke

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I have to say that given the cover of this book, and the title, I was expecting the book to be more…tongue in cheek? But this book isn’t that. Rather than being a fun “backstory” of our fascination with butts, it’s a pretty straightforward gender and race studies critique of Western pop culture’s fascination with butts. The misdirection is certainly the fault of the publisher, as the author is very clear on the book’s intentions from the Introduction on. With that bit of business behind […]

Do you like cozy mysteries? And small towns? And…MURDER?

Vinyl Resting Place by Olivia Blacke

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Olivia Blacke’s Vinyl Resting Place is the first book in The Record Shop Mysteries, and also my first ever “cozy” mystery. If they’re all like this, I’m in! In Vinyl Resting Place, Juniper Jessup is looking for something new. And maybe, something familiar. After getting laid off from her cool tech job in the Pacific Northwest, she sells her car and moves back to her little hometown in Central Texas. More specifically, she comes home to Cedar River. It’s a little but outside of Austin […]

If the “them apples” guy wrote a book, this would be it.

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey

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What do Usher and St. Augustine have in common? I enjoyed their Confessions more than Thomas De Quincey’s. (Also, both Usher and Augustine were both great dancers in their prime.) There have probably been books that were more disappointing to me that Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, but I can’t think of any right now. Mr. De Quincey’s Confessions first made itself known to me through Nick Tosches’ The Last Opium Den. That book was less about opium and more about the search for something […]

“Where can I start?

The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play by Neil Fiore

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A couple of year ago I had a (very) full-time job, graduate classes, young kids, etc. It was a lot. And for some reason I wasn’t able to get stuff done anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t have time; it was that I just couldn’t bring myself to do certain tasks. I think it was mainly because they weren’t clearly defined or they were too large. Someone in my grad school cohort recommended The Now Habit. It sounds hyperbolic to say that this book changed […]

“Jealousy, turning saints into the sea…”

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

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All the way back in the ancient days of 2016, I read de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life. That put famed author Marcel Proust on my radar. Last year I read about Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove) reading Proust when recovering from a traumatic open heart surgery, and how Proust reconnected him to his love of reading. After that, I finally took the plunge! I spent four months reading through the 600+ pages of Swann’s Way, volume one (of six) of Proust’s In Search […]



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