Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Threshold of Revelation

Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner

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I was lucky enough to see Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America: Millennium Approaches on Broadway a long time ago. Reading the script now all these years later, I am surprised to find the written script gave me the shivers just like the live play did. Maybe because I have memories of the experience and have projected them onto the words. But there is no doubt that the play in all its forms is powerful. The subtitle of the play is “A Gay Fantasia on […]

OK Colonizer

Attacking Earth and Sun by Mathieu Belezi

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In 1827 the French consul got into an argument with the ruler of the Regency of Algiers. Three years later the French government invaded what we now know as Algeria; it took until 1847 for the country to officially become part of France, and there were isolated pockets of fighting and conflict that lasted until 1903. In other words, it was a nasty, bloody business. Somewhere in the middle of all this France decided it would be a great idea to send French folks to […]

In Many Ways, Very Necessary

The Afterlife of Malcolm X by Mark Whitaker

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I first encountered the legend Malcolm X when I was in fifth grade. At my lily-white elementary school, my–a rarity in my hometown–black male teacher distributed a list of names to his predominantly white students and asked each to choose a name for a report. This was fifth grade and in the late 1980s; we were beginning to learn about black history, and it was February–Black History Month. The mimeographed list came to me, and I chose Malcolm X. I’d never before heard of him; […]

Refreshingly good

Kingdom, vol. 1-2 by Yasuhisa Hara

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It felt good to read the first 2 volumes of Kingdom by Yasuhisa Hara after a lot of junk food books. It reminded me a lot of Vagabond by Takehiko Inoue, so I was not surprised to see Hara worked as Inoue’s assistant in the past. In ancient China, two boys named Xin and Piao are best friends and slaves with ambitious goals to be great generals – the only path out of slavery* for them and their wives and children. Not that they have […]

An Adults Only Lord of the Flies

Batavia by Peter FitzSimons

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The Batavia, the pride of the Dutch East India Company, is on its maiden voyage from Amsterdam to the Dutch East Indies when it wrecks off just off the coast of western Australia. But the tragedy of the Batavia stems not from the forces of nature, but from the evil in men’s hearts. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts about this story in the last couple years, and was so curious about this strange, dark story, part survival story and part true crime, that I decided […]

Lincoln Viewed through the Power of Melancholy

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled his Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk

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This new to me biography of Lincoln focuses on his depressive temperament, how he and his contemporaries viewed that temperament, and what modern-day readers can learn from Lincoln’s life and outlook. Shenk lays the groundwork for this book by observing that the labeling of psychological phenomena can be helpful, but also artificially limiting. “Language doesn’t just name a reality; it creates a reality.” Going to talk about how Lincoln has been viewed throughout history, including as bipolar and depressed, Shenk states that “such retrospective diagnoses […]



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