Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Natural curiosity made her the first

Foote Was First!: How One Curious Woman Connected Carbon Dioxide and Climate Change by Jen Bryant and Amy June Bates

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While a bit more academic than many picture book biographies, Foote Was First!: How One Curious Woman Connected Carbon Dioxide and Climate Change by Jen Bryant and Amy June Bates (illustrator), is well written and illustrated, presenting highlighted events in the life of Eunice Foote.  That is a simplified (and not exactly grammatically correct) description of the book. I can’t really say a lot about the book other than it is oddly simpler with the illustrations and yet there is a complexity to them. The […]

The not-so-lady with the creepy a$$ doll who did more than just Marlene Dietrich

Joe the Pirate by Hubert and Virginie Augustin

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Joe the Pirate by Hubert and Virginie Augustin is about a totally and completely scandalous individual. Born Marion Barbara Carstairs (later known as Tuffy), she would become Joe Carstairs. She didn’t want to be a man, just had fun pretending to be one. This started when she was young and having a swinging time in the early 1900’s. The flapping 1920s would see her have affairs with such people as Dolly Wilde, Tallulah Bankhead (who liked to take her dress off and jiggle it in […]

Not just a Native American Rock Band

Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band by Christian Staebler, Sonia Paoloni, and Thibault Balahy

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Several weeks ago I was looking for books in the young adult graphic novel section of my local library. I was in a mood that told me to just grab a few. I know when I’m in that kind of mood, I can find something amazing or something less than ideal (afterall there is a reason it was on the shelf and not checked out). One of those was Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band by Christian Staebler, Sonia Paoloni, and […]

“You can fret yourself right out of doing anything! …The worst thing you can fall into is thinking you have to be deep or profound in your work, and being afraid to appear dumb, unhip, uncool.”

Drawn Together by Aline Crumb and Robert Crumb

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Dan Nadal’s biography of Robert Crumb had a big impact on me last year and so I’m continuing my exploration with Drawn Together, a collection of the collaborative comics he did with his wife, Aline. Aline was a comics pioneer in her own right, and seeing their back and forth here is fascinating, especially with their contrasting styles and outlooks on life. The comics span from 1974 through 2010, so we get to see the development of their relationship and of how they built their […]

Shine On, You Crafty Diamond

Diamond Doris: The True Story of the World's Most Notorious Jewel Thief by Doris Payne, with Zelda Lockhart

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When I say I love true crime, I don’t mean “they found her in pieces in the basement” true crime.  Heists, cons, grifts, and capers are more my speed, which is what drew me to the story of Doris Payne, an international jewel thief who got away with robbing some of the world’s best jewelers for over sixty years. “Diamonds” by qthomasbower is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 . Payne was born in West Virginia, lived in Cleveland, and made her first big score in […]

A childhood idol turned into a real person

Say Everything by Ione Skye

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I was probably about twelve years old when I first watched Say Anything with John Cusack and Ione Skye, and it made a deep impression on me. In fact, it shaped my goals for most of my teenage years. I still have a very clear memory of Ione Skye’s character, Diane, marking every word that she looked up in her giant dictionary. I thought she was beautiful and smart, and I wanted to be just like her. In fact, because of Diane, I was intent on becoming […]



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