Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

90s Pop Culture Drama FTW

Hits, Flops and Other Illusions by Ed Zwick

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Recently, a Gwyneth Paltrow biography was published and people were only too happy to revisit and re-examine the old gossip about the friendship breakdown between Paltrow and our 90s queen Winona Ryder. One of the articles referenced an excerpt from Ed Zwick’s memoir. The excerpt was about his struggle to get Shakespeare in Love made, although it was primarily focused on the behind the scenes drama associated with the original cast, focusing on a young Julia Roberts. It all read as very juicy and 90s, […]

No matter how long you stand there examining yourself naked before a mirror, you’ll never see reflected what’s inside.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

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To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. But even activities that appear fruitless don’t necessarily end up so. ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running CBR17 Bingo: Culture This book discusses a runner’s mentality as well as running culture. As an avid reader of Haruki Murakami, I’ve been meaning to check this book off of my list for going on ten years. I wondered though if his nonfiction could hold up […]

Dispatches from the Frontier

Little Pasture on the Prairie by Eliza Blue

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CBR17 Bingo: Work – In this book, the author discusses her life and work on her family ranch, where she is a shepherdess, and all the highs and lows of that lifestyle. Author, songwriter, and shepherdess Eliza Blue invites us into her life on her family ranch in South Dakota as told in the highlights from a decade of newspaper columns. I’ve always lived in places that are hilly or places that are green or places that are both hilly and green. I think if […]

“When they ban a book, they’re really just trying to cover up something they don’t want you to know.”

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Recently a coworker asked us to send some of our favorite Banned and Challenged book titles and a little snippet about it and/or why we love it.  I emailed her back and said did she want them alphabetically, order of importance or just my favorite? How did I approach it? I thought, send a few favorite author(s), but that was too many. Just every book I read that has been B-and/or-C? Way too many to do. Therefore I said “Make it simple.” And found a […]

“…he was one of the happiest men who had ever lived — happy in his family, his home, his books, his work, his garden, his travels, and the world of nature and people around him.”

Harold Nicolson: A Biography (Volume II: 1930-1968) by James Lees-Milne

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This second volume of James Lees-Milne’s biography of Harold Nicolson covers 1930-1968. With the large amount of world and personal history that this book covers, JLM continues to masterfully shepherd the reader through Nicolson’s fascinating life. I enjoyed this volume more than the first one (although they are both excellent) mainly because with him leaving the Foreign Office, the foreign policy explanations die down a bit and I am more well versed in the history of this era. While the Paris Conference and the Lausanne […]

The Word ‘Turbulent’ Is Bearing a Lot of Weight Here

Bomb Season in Jakarta: A personal account of a turbulent period in Australian diplomacy by Grant Dooley

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This is yet another book I’ve discovered via listening to ABC’s Conversations.  The subtitle of Bomb Season in Jakarta is A personal account of a turbulent period in Australian diplomacy, and Grant Dooley is not kidding when he writes this. Back in 2004, Dooley and his family had moved to Indonesia to start a three year stint working at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. This was a few years after the 1999 East Timorese crisis and only two years after the 2002 Bali Bombings, Indonesia’s […]



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