Cannonball Read 9

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

I Used to Be With It, But Then They Changed What It Was

Future Shock by Alvin Toffler

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It’s surprising when books written about the future are still relevant decades later, and non fiction ones especially. In my experience the speculative tends to be dystopian, novels that seem relevant because human flaws are fairly consistent and easy to extrapolate from – Hi there 1984, Handmaid’s Tale, and Brave New World; I really wish we weren’t still power-hungry, misogynistic, and ready to amuse ourselves to death, but y’all weren’t wrong.  It is much harder to predict where we’ll go right, because hell, then success would be a formula. Alvin Toffler’s book splits the difference, though non-fiction it neither suggests […]

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8/20/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:30 |

Exactly to my taste

Flavor: The Science of Our Most Neglected Sense by Bob Holmes

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I adored this book, but it was so suited to my interests that I fear I may have dreamed it. I love to cook, I love social histories, and I love pop science, particularly deep digs into the everyday things we take for granted. Bob Holmes takes us on a scientific tour of flavor, doing his best to separate it from the physical perception of tasting, the senses of smell and touch, while acknowledging how indebted flavor is to each. This is somewhat limited by language; it’s hard to separate flavor and taste when English uses the words interchangeably, but […]

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8/18/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:29 |

I feel guilty I didn’t like this more

We are never meeting in real life by Samantha Irby

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I really wanted to like this book.  It seemed up my alley, and I was in the mood for essays; something sassy and brisk. The back cover blurbs were encouraging, and I had finished Lindy West’s Shrill just prior to the start of this cannonball read, so her endorsement left me hopeful that this book would have the same effervescent tone while having something larger to say about culture or gender or race. Instead, it just felt to me like reading someone’s blog – which makes sense given Irby’s start online – occasionally amusing anecdotes without much point. Moreover, not […]

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8/11/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:28 |

Been thinkin a lot today; thought about the army.

Grunt by Mary Roach

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Mary Roach’s absent-minded professor tangents have never been more welcome than in this book about the science of military development. I picked this up due to my long established weakness for remaindered books and a desire for a light, unchallenging read; Roach is an expert at crafting pop science reads at their most accessible, sometimes to a fault. That said, I was nervous about the military theme as I generally don’t gravitate to media on this topic and immediately feared I was going to get something about why tank A is superior to humvee B. If that kind of book […]

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8/5/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:27 |

Breezy as the title implies

The Moon's a Balloon by David Niven

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This isn’t my copy of this book, nor is it the edition I linked to, but can we just take a moment to praise the Folio company for producing a physical book so very suited to its subject matter? It’s not simply the jaunty cover art – stylish down to the font – but the book itself has an eggshell textured cover that feels elegant, expensive, classy. The pages are thick, deceptively so; the memoir only reaches 300 pages by virtue of its index but the book seems like it has much more to say than it actually contains. The physical […]

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7/14/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:26 |

I’ll read a Sacks book about the psychology of marshmallows.

On the Move by Oliver Sacks

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I ran into a college professor at a bar a few years after graduation (and a few beers after sobriety) who made reference to something I said having been brilliant. I demurred “I bet you say that to all the girls,” but she insisted “no, no, you had a reputation for being brilliant. Reckless, but brilliant.” I’ve never been prouder of a compliment, precisely because I know it wasn’t entirely intended as such. I want that line on my tombstone. I bring it up because a teacher noted of a young Oliver Sacks that he “will go far, if he […]

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7/7/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:25 |

Feed me, Seymour; feed me.

Alice Waters and Chez Panisse by Thomas McNamee

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So, like any new parent, I will take any opportunity to insert a story about my kid into a conversation.  At three months old he’s abnormally interested in food, which is fairly remarkable when his first-hand experience of it is limited to milk. The kid watches people eat like it’s the most fascinating thing anyone has ever done. It will sometimes calm him down when he’s fussy. He’s transfixed by the experience of eating, even when he isn’t able to  enjoy it directly. The kid comes by it honestly though, as his mom does the same thing with books and […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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6/27/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:24 |

NPR: the book

Spark: how creativity works by Julie Burstein

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So, I find myself again reviewing a book I enjoyed in many ways but which fell short of its stated goal. I liked reading these interviews, but felt that they were united more by their NPR-iness than by anything they had to say about the creative process. I am a fan and supporter of NPR (making me atypical for this site, I know), but I never really differentiated between the segments, other than to squeal with joy at “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” or “Car Talk;” or curse my fate any time I heard Garrison Keillor’s voice. As such, I’m […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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6/18/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:23 |

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