Cannonball Read 9

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

So, so close

The Economic Naturalist by Robert H Frank

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How odd to read a book where a single, simple change would’ve improved it immensely.  The premise – applying economic theory to commonplace mysteries – is an interesting one, but in the introduction Frank shows its Achilles heel even as he shows the reader how he could have avoided it. He discusses the mystery of Braille keypads on drive up ATMs, and posits that the manufacturer of keypad buttons would have to have made two sets of buttons depending on whether they were for drive up ATMs or stand alone models, and that this would be inefficient. A fair point, […]

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10/15/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:40 |

Anecdotes in search of a science

Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-davidowitz

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I think the author forgot his concept halfway through the book.  That’s a pity, because I think I’d have liked the book the author was going to write.  This felt an awful lot like a collection of interesting bits of data that the author attempted to will into a book, because the stated objection – to demonstrate via data mining sites like Facebook and Google that our public preferences don’t always align with our true beliefs – falls by the wayside midway through.  It was interesting reading about how the most recent triple crown winner was saved from sale because […]

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10/11/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:39 |

Don’t tell him I got it half price

Thanks For The Money by Joel mchale

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Joel McHale is on the freebies list along with Bret McKenzie and Donald Glover; when he came to a local comedy festival I was 112% in,  and was in no way disappointed. I liked him before, but after he made several consecutive pyramid scheme jokes with the local royalty behind Amway IN ATTENDANCE, I can say it blossomed into love.  It was a thing of beauty; like the rake gag from The Simpsons it started funny, got tedious, then cycled back to hilarity again. I remain in awe, and wish I had purchased my signed copy of his book at […]

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10/7/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:38 |

Nope

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon

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The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is in my top three favorite books and possibly occupies the top slot, but it took me a full hundred pages to get into it; I spent months trying to slog through the beginning of it and the last three quarters only took me days. For that reason I try to give Michael Chabon books more patience than I would others, but man did reading this feel like a chore. I may have referenced this in another review, but that XKCD comic had it right: there’s an inverse relationship between the number of made […]

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10/1/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:37 |

If only there were some kind of adage to warn me

A Once Crowded Sky by Tom King

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… but damn that’s a beautiful cover.  I mean look at it.  It’s so pretty.  And that title! And it’s about comics and the nature of heroism with the loss of supernatural powers by someone who actually likes comics! (And writes them – I didn’t connect the dots that this is the same Tom King that wrote the truly excellent Vision for Marvel, but once I did it was really obvious, just as he uses Shakespeare as a through-line in that series, he uses Dante’s Paradise here).  It should’ve been so good, you guys! …it wasn’t. And dammit, I should’ve […]

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9/30/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:36 |

The best dystopias always seem plausible

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi

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Man did I enjoy this more than I expected to. It was an impulse buy – thanks Barnes and Noble for the “buy two get the third free” deals that always get me to buy books I might not otherwise … damn your siren song! – and it just seemed like the kind of book that could easily be dry and bloodless.  I’ve read too many dystopias that veer into freshman philosophy territory, derailed by how terrible everything is and how humanity is doomed to be realistic. I like darkness in a narrative, but the world isn’t that bleak all […]

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9/20/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:35 |

I wanted a deep dive; this was more like a splash pad

Present at the Future by Ira Flatow

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To answer the obvious question, yeah, I bought this on the strength of NPR Science Friday host Ira Flatow’s name. I was hoping for something like Mary Roach with a harder scientific bent; a guided tour for the layman of modern science’s leading edge. It ended up feeling like the abstract of 20 or so different books, with each chapter reading more like a summary of different experimental fields. The chapters are too brief and explores where each branch is heading so shallowly that one has little sense of why each scientific endeavor matters. It’s more a slide show than […]

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9/9/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:34 |

A Horse and Carriage DID Get Replaced With Cars, You Know

Marriage, a History by Stephanie Coontz

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This was one of several books I purchased from the bibliography of Aziz Ansari’s AMAZING Modern Romance – seriously, go buy that book – in an Amazon order that made my husband very nervous upon delivery. (I’m not looking to divorce you, dear; I just find social histories fascinating). However, the book that I kept thinking of when reading this was Future Shock. This book is barely a decade old and thankfully one major component is already out of date with the legalization of gay marriage. In any case, the book is still worth reading as its scope is much […]

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9/4/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:33 |


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