Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


A surprisingly educational celebrity autobiography

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

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In this very engaging autobiography, Trevor Noah opens up about growing up in South Africa, born from a black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father at a time when this was literally a crime punishable with several years in prison. The Apartheid regime ended while Noah was still young, but his childhood was still deeply affected by the fact that he was a mixed race child in a society where the races were not supposed to mix at all, to the point where his […]

“My father was dying and I was pregnant. Both struck me as impossibly unreal.”

Brother, I'm dying by Edwidge Danticat

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Do you like to cry? Do you like to be reminded about sadness, loss and the general unfairness of the world. Then boy! Do I have the book for you. In the very first chapter we follow a daughter as she takes her dying father to the hospital, and then later in the living room at home when he gathers the family turns to his wife and asks “What would you like to happen after I am gone?” So there we are, not just in […]

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”

Becoming by Michelle Obama

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During the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, it became clear to me that Michelle Obama was a statuesque and beautiful woman, who was also clearly intelligent, caring and wanting to make a difference alongside her husband. Being part of the first African American Presidential couple in the White House and basically raising her young daughters more or less in the public eye cannot have been easy. Nevertheless, I didn’t know all that much about Michelle Obama, which was why this autobiography was so interesting […]

My First Ever DNF featuring Paul, Mary, Mel, and Sue <3

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American on Purpose opens with a chapter on the white house correspondents dinner which I read just after reading this article. It made it feel a bit sour in my mouth. I bought this book, because, despite my rather lukewarm rating for Between the Bridge and the River, I did think it showed potential and people here were raging about how this biography was really good. I persevered through it, somewhat, but it was honestly a slog. It is mainly written for Americans, and there […]

Robert Webb is not David Mitchell

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Robert Webb is the other half of the comedic duo featuring the greatest love of my life. So when he published How not to be a boy a couple years back I was CERTAIN I was gonna buy his book. The man behind some of my favourite comedy, writing about his life through a feminist lense. SIGN ME THE FUCK UP. But yah. I never got round to it. Despite seeing his adorable face in the window of every fucking Waterstones for a year I […]

I was pleasantly surprised to be so absorbed in this book – cbr10bingo Delicious!

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A friend game me Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir by Padma Lakshmi as a birthday present.  She acknowledged that non-fiction isn’t really my thing but she thought I might find it interesting.  She hadn’t read the book herself but had heard good things about it.  I don’t recall ever having read an autobiography, or biography for that matter.  And my friend was completely correct about me not being into non-fiction.  This is only my second non-fiction book this year out of my current 47 […]



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