Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“What we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.”

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

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Nowhere Book Bingo 25: A Bookish Memoir/biography CBR17 Pie Chart: Education CBR17 Bingo: Citizen (Nafisi lived and taught in Iran during increasingly more dictatorial strictures against its citizens) Official summary: Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, a bold and inspired teacher named Azar Nafisi secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. As Islamic morality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, fundamentalists seized hold of the universities, and a blind censor stifled artistic […]

A Dual Biography that works

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I read Churchill and Orwell because I am a fan of the author, Thomas E. Ricks.  Ricks is best known as a military historian who wrote Fiasco and The Generals, both of which I highly recommend.  This book is a bit of a departure for Ricks but the topic seemed interesting.  Churchill and Orwell is a dual biography of two British men who had similarly parallel lives during WWII-era Great Britain.  I was surprised to find how much the two men had in common, especially […]

An Islamic adventure story filled with djinn and revolution

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This highly imaginative debut novel by an American-born convert to Muslim has garnered praise from all and sundry. Part fantasy, part mythology, part religious tract and part political tract, Alif the Unseen is as hard to pin down as it is fun to experience. It is the story of a young half-Arab/half-Indian man living in an unidentified Arab sheikdom known as “The City.” Alif (his “label”) is a computer hacker par excellence, and from his mother’s apartment is happy to sell his services to any […]



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