Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About xoxoxoe

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I am an artist, blogger, and culture critic. I write about movies, books, television, pop culture—old and new—with a feminine/feminist perspective. sometimes I post pictures of the kid, too. Check out my blog, xoxoxo e, for all of my recent interests, exploits, and opinionated opinions. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: xoxoxoe's Quick Questions interview.)

xoxoxoe's Reviews:

How Is It Almost September? Catching Up with Cannonball

Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump

Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas

Crime In Progress by Glenn Simpson & Peter Fritsch

Burglars Can't Be Choosers by Lawrence Block

The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian by Lawrence Block

The Burglar Who Like to Quote Kipling by Lawrence Block

Seinfeldia: How A Show About Nothing Changed Everything by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

I'll Have What She's Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting by Rebecca Harrington

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album by Ken Caillat and Steve Stiefel

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O.K., I admit it, I have not posted any reviews this Cannonball. It’s just been a weird and for too many, sad time, hasn’t it? But I have managed to do a little reading. These may just be capsule reviews, but that’s just about all I can handle at the moment. There have been some good books and not so good books, but it’s 2020, so that’s par for the course. Looking at this list I realize that I have been drawn to books to […]

Demi Moore, Inside Out

Inside Out: A Memoir by Demi Moore

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Reading Demi Moore’s memoir Inside Out is like having a seat in the room while she is undergoing therapy. And yoga. And flirting with Bruce Willis. And being abused by her parents. And, strangest of all, not spending much time in Hollywood. But you do get a pretty good picture of her home and life in Hailey, Idaho, which she clearly loves, an oasis she has created for her family and herself. Inside Out flows, but it is not exactly an easy book to read. Real […]

Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill

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Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill reads like a spy novel. The full title is Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators. And Farrow lays out quite a conspiracy. He takes the reader inside the world of investigative reporting – in his case for NBC News. Not only does NBC prove to ultimately be hostile towards allowing Farrow to tell the full story of his investigation into allegation of sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein, but it is also a hotbed of abuse […]

Book to Film: The Talented Mr. Ripley

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Patricia Highsmith wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley in in 1955. She based it loosely on Henry James’s The Ambassadors (which I now have to add to my to-read list). The lead character, Tom Ripley, proved so popular, that she brought him back for four more novels. When the reader first meets Tom he is living close to the bone in New York City, subsisting on his “friends,” or running various schemes, including mail fraud. But Tom isn’t really great at his schemes, and he doesn’t like […]

Books to Film: Pal Joey and BUtterfield 8

John O'Hara: Four Novels of the 1930s by John O'Hara

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After recently reading Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, I decided that I not only wanted to continue with my book-to-film theme, but keep it centered in New York City, too. That led me to John O’Hara’s  Pal Joey and BUtterfield 8. I had heard for years that the 1957 film version of Pal Joey was nothing like the 1940 Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical – Gene Kelly apparently portrayed him as a genuine no-good crumb (as Joey would say). In the film Frank Sinatra isn’t exactly […]

Free Spirit Holly Golightly, Forever a Cipher

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

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Breakfast at Tiffany’s the book shares a lot of the same traits as Breakfast at Tiffany’s the film: charming in places, predictable in others, with some questionable and unnecessary ethnic and racist slurs. Truman Capote wrote it in 1958, but the story is set in 1943 as a young, unnamed writer (Capote’s stand-in) moves into a brownstone on the upper east side of Manhattan. He soon encounters his 19 year-old enigmatic neighbor, Holly Golightly. She proceeds to charm and repel him at intervals, while remaining […]



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