Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Interesting Even if You’re Familiar with the Topic

All That Remains by Sue Black

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Best for: Those interested in forensic anthropology. Not for those who find the discussion of death (and specifics surrounding the investigation of it) to be traumatizing. In a nutshell: Forensic Anthropologist Black shares her experience with the dead and the living. Worth quoting: “If we cannot influence it, perhaps we shouldn’t waste precious time worrying about it.” Why I chose it: I’ve been interested in the field of forensic anthropology for awhile. Review: If you’ve read my reviews a bunch of the years (or if […]

Reading it for a friend

The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts

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My first book of 2025 is an audiobook that I read for my book club. I wouldn’t have heard of it or chosen it on my own, but that’s (partly) what book clubs are for. The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America (2021) by Elizabeth Letts is the story of Annie Wilkins and her horseback adventures from Maine to Hollywood, California. Annie was a 63-year-old farmer, on her own in Maine, and things were not […]

Understandable how you could mistake this knife fetishist for a murderer, but he didn’t do it.

Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin

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Thanks to NetGalley, RBmedia, and Recorded Books for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. Yes, this book was written by a TV chef. Apparently he was on Masterchef—I’ve never seen it. But unless he used a very secret ghostwriter, he did a good job! I truly have no idea why the ratings for this book are so low coming out of the UK*, or why the cozy mystery people have not come flocking (though this isn’t a cozy, it does have […]

“You could call T. Rex the James Dean of dinosaurs: it lived fast and died young.”

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte

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This, friends, is a dinosaur. I believe Pesto’s ancestors would be confused by him, but that’s the beauty of nature. It’s super weird and always doing unexpected things. This book manages to impart a lot of information about the evolution, time on earth, and extinction of (most) dinosaurs while at the same time being very readable and fun to consume. At one point the author uses the phrase “crow-sized weirdos with wings on their arms and legs” to describe a species of dinosaur that differed […]

A Curious Story Indeed

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

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“I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.” I’m not sure what I expected from this book, but to say I was pleasantly surprised is putting it mildly.  This book languished on my TBR for over a decade.  I don’t know why I avoided it, but I just never got around to picking it up.  I ended up listening […]

Dammit, Jerry!

Welcome to Pawnee: Stories of Friendship, Waffles, and Parks and Recreation by Jim O'Heir

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Amy Poehler, Rashida, Jones, Nick Offerman, Adam Scott, Aubrey Plaza, and Aziz Ansari. These are just a few of the stars of Parks and Recreation who didn’t bother talking to Jim O’Heir for this book. In both title and jacket copy, Welcome to Pawnee bills itself as a comprehensive, behind the scenes account of the beloved NBC sitcom, which ran for seven seasons and garnered a small but fervent fanbase. O’Heir was, of course, the actor behind sad-sack office punching bag Jerry Gergich. As a […]



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