Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Object Lessons

Blue Jeans by Carolyn Purnell

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Blue jeans are a practically universal garment, but their sheer ubiquity belies their relatively short history and the staggering path they took to hit the mainstream. Blue Jeans is a short non-fiction book from a series called Object Lessons, which dives into the histories of the everyday objects in our lives that we’re so used to that we hardly consider them in any depth. I certainly look at my blue jeans now with fresh eyes, which is entirely the point. The book is divided into […]

It all changed with a Facebook friend request 

Everything Is Fine, I'll Just Work Harder: Confessions of a Former Badass by Cara Gormally

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Even after sitting on it, I am still not sure how I feel about Everything Is Fine, I’ll Just Work Harder: Confessions of a Former Badass by Cara Gormally. I started and stopped when trying to write the review multiple times. I even started before I officially finished the book so I could try and think out what a piece of the writing evoked in me.  In the end, I am going to say that Everything is Fine is a personal read. You take from […]

Learn the Lingo, Break Its Power

Cultish: The Language of Fanatacism by Amanda Montell

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Over the past year I felt that two books in particular were relevant at such a fraught time for our country and the world. The first was Suzanne Collins’ latest installment in the Hunger Games series, Sunrise on the Reaping, which examined propaganda and its place in authoritarianism. The second is Cultish, by Amanda Montell, which is a nonfiction book that looks at cults and their nonstandard use of language to draw in followers and exclude outsiders. Informative, troubling, often very funny, Cultish looks at […]

An enjoyable puff piece

Will Eisner: a Comics Biography by Stephen Weiner and Dan Mazur

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Earlier this year when I finally read the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a book about two fictional comic book legends, I realized I knew very little about Will Eisner, a very real comic legend. There were many times when I thought, is that thing in Kavalier and Clay about Will Eisner? I bet that’s an Eisner reference. I should know more about Will Eisner. So I found Will Eisner: a Comics Biography by Stephen Weiner and Dan Mazur. I had a few questions […]

Anything is political if you care about it

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism by Kristen R. Ghodsee

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I thought Kristen R. Ghodsee’s Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism would be an indulgent 200 page feminist think piece where I could feel good about myself for already thinking the things Ghodsee says. It was better than that. To oversimplify, the book is about the rights women lost when the Eastern Bloc fell. Does that mean 20th century East European state socialism was some feminist human rights utopia? Of course not. I’m happy Ghodsee dropped (most of) the defensiveness early on – she […]

Everyday Jewish Lives Divided by Time

Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World by Jane Ziegelman

Matzah Ball Blues by Jennifer Wilck

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I did not mean to make it a Jewish double feature, but I just happened to read these books around the same time, and it was interesting to see the same traditions discussed in a historical context and then in an average middle-class family from New Jersey. Once There Was a Town by Jane Ziegelman – 3 stars After the Holocaust, since entire shtetls had been reduced to just a handful of survivors, people across continents came together to put together yizkor books to record […]



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