Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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thewheelbarrow

I'm a 35yo father of a little girl who will run the world someday and her sweet little brother. I finished my first cannonball last year and I want to work harder on the writing this year.

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thewheelbarrow's Reviews:

The world is full of garbage people.

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

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So, I don’t mean the world is full of people made of garbage.  I mean that many human beings, too many (though that is probably subjective), are living embodiments of Mos Eisely, wretched hives of scum and villainy.  These two books by Michael Lewis are about those people. The Big Short, now a movie that I have not seen, is about the people who, in a way, foresaw the financial recession of 2008 and profited from it.  Immensely.  Funny though, those people are not the antagonists of the story.  The protagonists simply took advantage of the greed and malfeasance of […]

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We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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10/24/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:28 |

Arguably, America’s Greatest General

George Marshall: Defender of the Republic by David L. Roll

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I remember learning about the Marshall Plan in AP US History class and how critical it was to repairing the world after WWII. I did not realize until years later that General George C. Marshall was individual who lent his name to the plan. I’ve been in the Army for thirteen years, as of yesterday, and I’ve developed opinions on many famous generals from our history. Most of those opinions are demonstrably leery of anyone who receives unadulterated hero worship. I am not a fan of Patton, or Chesty Puller (I’m sorry to my USMC brethren). I think MacArthur explains […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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9/27/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:26 |

Takeshi Kovacs #2 & #3

Broken Angles by Richard K. Morgan

Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan

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These are the second and third books of the Takeshi Kovacs series. The first is Altered Carbon which shares its name with the show upon which it is based. In these two books, we follow the exploits of Takeshi Kovacs, ex-U.N. Envoy, as he (mostly) mercenaries his way through the galaxy. He re-sleeves for each adventure and is the gritty, hard-boiled detective/hired gun. If you are unfamiliar with the first book or the show, human consciousness is transferrable from body to body and is stored in you individual “stack”. Because bodies have become, essentially, disposable, they are called sleeves and […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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9/27/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:25 |

The Revolutionary War in Three Volumes

Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick

Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick

In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown by Nathaniel Philbrick

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***This is a truly terrible review of three books.  If you like the Revolutionary War, read them.*** I first learned about Nathaniel Philbrick while doing research for a presentation on one of the commanders of the Battle of Bunker Hill, COL William Prescott.  While I planned to read the book then, I just did what most people do while preparing a presentation, I read only the things that were super relevant to the project.  I told myself for years that I would come back to the book and this year I finally did.  These three books trace the history of […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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9/20/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:23 |

Less is more…. I’m so sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

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I saw that Less won the Pulitzer Prize and was available at my library so I checked it out.  The award is the ONLY thing I knew about the book when I began reading it. Less is about Andrew Less, a writer about to turn fifty and going through some sort of mid-life crisis.  His younger, on again/off again boyfriend is getting married and his book is rejected by his publisher.  He uses the opportunity to accept offers that he has to travel the world and calamity ensues. Less is inherently a funny book, which surprised me as I do […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

  • Less by Andrew Sean Greer

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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9/20/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:20 |

Some non-Sandman Slim from Richard Kadrey

The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey

Dead Set by Richard Kadrey

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I am a big fan of the Sandman Slim series, especially the narration by MacLeod Andrews who just NAILS the character.  Thus, I tried some of the author’s other books, The Grand Dark and Dead Set.  I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect and yet I feel that my expectations were met.  Both books deal with grim worlds and the occult.  I think I could identify them as Kadrey books even without knowing, but that might be some really strong hindsight bias. I read The Grand Dark first.  It is a stand alone novel about a messenger/delivery man in a […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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8/23/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:19 |

The Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy – well, books 2 and 3

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

Death's End by Cixin Liu

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The first book in the series, The Three-Body Problem, is one of the most popular books in Chinese according to wikipedia.  The Three-Body Problem was the first Asian novel to win the Hugo Award for best novel.  I read it at the end of last year and waited a few months for the next two to become available.  I was able to listen to books 2 and 3 back-to-back which was really nice. So this trilogy is science fiction, but what I would consider hard-SF.  That’s not to say that I coined the term, just that the specific definition of […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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5/24/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:17 |

Beautiful and Tragic

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

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I chose to read this book because I saw it on the to-read list of a baseball player I really like, Sean Doolittle.  Doolittle is a very good player and someone who is known for being an even better person.  He is also considered one of the most, let’s say intellectual, players in baseball and maybe sports as a whole.  He attended the University of Virginia, in my home state, so I’ve always felt an affinity for Doolittle.  He posted a picture of his current to-do list and baseball analyst Keith Law, another favorite of mine, and Law tweeted that […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Beautiful and Tragic"

4/17/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:15 |


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