Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Unpainted Huffhines

CBR17 Participant
CBR18 Participant

I love to read, one of the many personality traits I've inherited from my dad. My family lost him to cancer in September 2021.

Unpainted Huffhines's Reviews:

This History Is Still Being Written

A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History by Jeanne Theoharis

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“In answer to those who claim young people protesting across the country against mass incarceration, police violence, deportation, school inequality, rising Islamophobia, global injustice, and environmental racism are nothing like the activists of the storied days of the civil rights movement, our historically informed answer must be, they are” (208). Jeanne Theoharis’ A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History has been languishing on my TBR since 2018, the year it was published. I wish I had read it earlier, […]

It Was Capitalism All Along

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

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I read these two books practically back to back (well, with Jakob Kerr’s Dead Money sandwiched in between, for a fictional version of the profit-at-all-costs mentality), and combined with the current political climate, I’m ready to wheel out the guillotine. PRK’s Empire of Pain is, predictably, a well-researched and thorough discussion of three generations of the Sackler family, who manage to become more feckless the more distant they are from Purdue Pharma’s founding three brothers Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond. However, the “entrepreneurial spirit” that seizes these brothers, particularly […]

Too Much Moral Ambiguity?

One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall

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I can’t really discuss One of the Good Guys without major spoilers. So be aware–this review includes spoilers. This part is not a spoiler. One of the Good Guys includes shifting perspectives among three principal characters: Cole, who has moved to a remote cabin during a contentious divorce; Mel, his soon-to-be ex-wife who seems filled with hostility toward him; and Lennie, an artist who lives near Cole and his new digs. Two young women activists who are walking along the English coast to call attention […]

You know the cliche about history…

A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan

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Yeah, the one about not knowing it and being doomed to repeat it? Well, here’s exhibit number bajillion, Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. This likely sounds familiar to you: a man of ill repute, shady origin, and gross appetites seeks to capitalize on the population’s racist and xenophobic impulses by becoming the head of a large organization; along the way he makes a lot of money by extorting […]

A Dark Story That Deserves a Better Storyteller

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

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Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls is, at first glance, a long-overdue study of the early twentieth century female factory workers who were hired to paint watch dials and hands with radium paint. Moore focuses on the workers at two plants, one in Newark, New Jersey, and one in Ottawa, Illinois. The women were encouraged, in fact required to “lip point,” to put the uranium-coated paintbrushes in their mouths to wet them and create the necessary fine point for the watches. Bosses never told them that radium could […]

Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights….

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

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Layne Fargo with The Favorites is trying to do what Barbara Kingsolver did with Demon Copperhead: take a literary classic and update it for a 21st-century audience. Some readers dislike Demon Copperhead for what they see as its forays into trauma porn and its sadistic treatment of the main character. For the record, I love DC. But no matter what you think of Kingsolver’s novel, it’s a work of genius compared to The Favorites. Admittedly, the scope is a bit different. While Demon Copperhead uses Dickens’ David Copperfield as a framework to explore the […]



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