Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Professional Science Gets Ugly

The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson

by 1 Comment

Bingo 4: People In addition to the cover being of a person, this is also a book about people on several levels, down to the genetics. On the surface it’s the biography of one of the winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry, Jennifer Doudna for her work with the CRISPR. The thing is, that’s actually not totally accurate. This book is also an introduction to bio-engineering and general molecular biology, an expose on academic science world and how it’s shifted to more business […]

“The world feels safer somehow if we share our pain. It becomes more manageable. And by sharing our pain, we inspire others to share theirs. We are so much less alone if learn to wear our imperfections proudly, like tarnished jewelry that still shines just as brightly.”

Broken (in the best possible way) by Jenny Lawson

by 2 Comments

Reading about loss, grief, and love in Harrow: The Ninth  while grieving the loss of my dog was perhaps not the best choice.  After reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for Cannonball Book Club, it seemed best to keep the comedy going and The Bloggess’s Broken (in the best possible way) was sitting on the shelf waiting.  I  thought I knew what I would be getting in a Jenny Lawson book.  Raw openness about her mental and physical health, along with side splittingly funny stories.  […]

Readers bring a lot of baggage to their reading material

The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein

by Leave a Comment

I wish I had listened to the age-old adage: don’t read the comments. But that’s exactly what I did after I finished reading The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein; I opened the book in Goodreads to see what others had to say. Of course, a lot of people don’t like to read books that have unlikeable, or less than perfect, main characters. (I feel a bit weird using the word ‘character’ about a biography, but let’s go with it anyway.) I knew this already, but I […]

Mediocre White Men

The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren Harding in His Times by Francis Russell

by Leave a Comment

For the last few years, I’ve had a curiosity about Warren Harding. While he was an unexceptional president, he apparently lived a very…shall we say…interesting social life. He also presided over the Teapot Dome Scandal, probably the biggest political scandal until Watergate, and his death was shrouded in mystery. When I read that James Ellroy once considered writing a fictional DC quartet with this book as a guide…well I had to get my hands on it. Holy crap was this bad. It’s tough to tell […]

Q&A With Dolly Parton

Dolly on Dolly Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton by Randy L. Schmidt

by Leave a Comment

I went to the library with a specific title to pick up but then I saw the book next to it and thought that looked better. I was looking for the Dolly Parton memoir but ended up with Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters. I don’t regret this. As the title suggests, the majority of the book is transcripts of interviews Dolly Parton has given starting in 1967 and running through 2014. Most come from major publications like Playboy, Rolling Stone, and Ladies Home Journal. […]

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

Gonzo by Hunter S Thompson (edited by Steve Crist & Laila Nabulsi)

by 1 Comment

In May 1998, I was handed a copy of Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by my new boyfriend. 22 years later, my love affair with both is still going strong. Thompson’s writing lit my brain up in a way I’d never really experienced before. Savagely funny and incredibly astute, especially when taking aim at the assassins of the American Dream, he even managed to make me understand American politics for a while (although this only ever lasts for as long as I’m […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo