Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Vroom vroom!

Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars by Paul Ingrassia

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I’m sure the subtitle has you curious, so here are some clues about the fifteen vehicles explored in this great book. Yes, there are only thirteen items listed below, but that’s because a few chapters overlap and include more than one exact make or model of vehicle. The Big Bang Bolsheviks, Nazis, and High-Performance Racers Fins Hitler to Hippies Explosions Iacocca DeLorean, but not that DeLorean Globalisation and Quality Iacocca II Yuppies Iacocca III Red(neck) Dawn Full Gosling Now to the review. The only downside […]

History of several kinds

The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty

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I have to admit up front that I did not completely finish The Cooking Gene; I had it from the library and ran out of renewals before I had to return it. This is not a fast read if you want to really get the content and the feeling. I don’t mean that the style is hard to read; on the contrary, it’s written in a pretty conversational way. What made it slower for me was the depth of what was being presented. This came […]

Some places, you never leave the same

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

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Kicking off my CBR12 Bingo with The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead for the RED book cover square. A beautifully written novel about a segregated Florida reform school during the Jim Crow era. All the boys never left The Nickel Academy the same as when they arrived. The novel flashes between the present and the past through Elwood’s eyes. Each chapter gives you a lyrical moment in time. We learn about the place in pieces, flashing forward to Elwood as an adult. As soon as […]

Finally Giving Credit Where It Is Due in the US Cooking Scene

The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks by Toni Tipton-Martin

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CBR Bingo Review #I’ve lost track: UnCannon I was thinking about using N.K. Jemisin’s Fifth Element here, but then I figured that was actually somewhat in my wheelhouse as it’s fantasy and queer. Not so much my standard wheelhouse is American History non-fiction. To make it palatable, I found what’s basically history via thing I do like: cookbooks. Scholar and cookbook collector Toni Tipton-Martin is not old (she’s later middle aged, about 60), not white (African American), and not a man. When I was checking […]

I wanted more about the assassins, less about contemporary American politics

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

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CBR12 BINGO: Pandemic (read whatever you want) BINGO: Gateway, Orange, Nostalgia, Pandemic, Shelfie When I opened this book, I had in my mind that it would be an easy 4-star review. Sarah Vowell is an entertaining writer, a passionate historian, and an American patriot, so I was excited to read this historical travel journal that has been on my TBR list for years. To sweeten the deal, it also promised glimpses into presidential assassins Charles Guiteau and Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated Presidents Garfield and McKinely, respectively, and […]



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