Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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1929

1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin

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1929 is one of those books I think it’s important to read, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. This is a deeply depressing book in today’s information economy (and regular economy) because it shows you how few lessons we’ve learned in the one hundred years since the Great Depression. Not only do we repeat the same financial mistakes over and over, we apparently have also never punished the people who make financial disaster happen. It echoes a lot of the lessons we failed to […]

If our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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I’ll start with the bottom line: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read in years. Author Rebecca Skloot not only explains the science in a compelling, accessible manner, she also explores the ethics of the medical research and devotes at least half the book to the people that were touched by Henrietta Lacks and her legacy. Five enthusiastic stars! It’s hard to say where this story “begins,” because it really depends on whether you are talking about […]

The Power of Audacity

The Improbable Victoria Woodhull by Eden Collinsworth

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Victoria Woodhull started life being paraded around as a child psychic by her conman father and marrying an alcoholic twice her age, but through a lot of work, luck, and audacity, she lived many lives as a stockbroker, a newspaper editor, a suffragette, the first female presidential candidate, and much more. Victoria Woodhull is one of those interesting American characters that’s been popping up in books I’ve read set in the Gilded Age for several years. She was eccentric and scrappy, but in many ways […]

If you’ve ever read David Sedaris, you know exactly what this is.

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

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How different cultures view intellectuals and their place in society always fascinates me. In France, prime time TV; if such a thing still exists in the streaming age; features high-brow, thoughtful debate. It sounds great to some, but then every speech needs to start with “As Moliere once said…” so it’s not all win-win. The Anglophone world seems to me to view intellectualism, and by that I mean careful, considered thought and subsequent arguments, with a mixture of “Gosh, isn’t that person witty” (Oscar Wilde, […]

She just wanted to be a doctor

Carlotta's Special Dress: How a Walk to School Changed Civil Rights History by Carlotta Walls Lanier, Lisa Frazier Page and Vanessa Brantley-Newton

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Carlotta’s Special Dress: How a Walk to School Changed Civil Rights History by Carlotta Walls Lanier, Lisa Frazier Page, and illustrator Vanessa Brantley-Newton   Read  via online reader, the book is actually out and about for purchase and reading. This book seemed like it would be “okay” or a nice book on a person I knew a little about, what a nice way to introduce them to kids, but would not be anything “wow.” Don’t judge a book by its cover and don’t assume because […]

Exploring love

Love, Retold by Tikva Wolf

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With celebrities coming out as non-mongomous and personal situations with friends and acquaintances, I decided to learn more about polyamory. Questions to poly and/or open relationshiped people, some online reading and more took me to Tikva Wolf. Their work, Ask Me about Polyamory: The Best of Kimchi Cuddles, I learned a few more things in a safe environment. Their non-technical, non-textbook format allowed me to stop and think, allowing me to understand things on an easier level than in academic forms. This led me to […]



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