Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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White Privilege Pyramid Scheme

Hey Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson

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Hey Hun is the story of Emily Lynn Paulson’s time in an MLM. She is the narrator of her own audiobook. Emily changes the name of the MLM to protect herself from being sued, but she doesn’t really level anything particularly shocking against the company. The company uses the standard techniques of an MLM in that the people who start the MLM make money by recruiting more people into the company, and the people at the bottom of the pyramid who joined the company last […]

Fashionable People Doing Unfashionable Things

Deliberate Cruelty, Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century by Roseanne Montillo

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Content Warning: This book deals with murder, as the title suggests. The book also addresses spousal abuse and suicide. This review mentions the murder but does not touch on the other topics. The novel opens with a bit of snarky back-and-forth between Truman Capote and the Millionaire’s Wife of the title (Ann Woodward), establishing that the two are not on friendly terms. She allegedly uses a slur about his lifestyle (Truman Capote was openly gay) to describe him, and he calls her “Mrs. Bang Bang” […]

The Past is a Different Country

Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age by Reid Mitenbuler

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Peter Freuchen first rose to prominence as an Arctic explorer in the early twentieth century, but during his long adventurous life he wore many other hats, becoming a best-selling author, working in Hollywood, and being imprisoned in a Nazi prison camp for being a member of the resistance. I like exploration stories. They introduce you to an old world that no longer exists, they have the kinds of details that boggle the mind, and are usually populated with exactly the eccentric kinds of people you’d […]

Many Truths, No Lies

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

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I knew next to nothing about Cleopatra going into this one. I know she lead Egypt at some point and had an affair with Marc Antony and that all of this caused a Mediterranean kerfuffle in the time of the Roman Empire. But I couldn’t say what her power was or what era she lived in or any of that. I couldn’t even guess, not even taking material from the wildly inaccurate plays and movies about her as I’ve seen none. So it felt good […]

A Solid David Geffen Biography

The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood by Tom King

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I read this after the second volume of James Kaplan’s magisterial biography of Frank Sinatra, so I was in the mood for reading about more horrible men with bad tempers. The Operator is a biography of David Geffen, who has had an extremely broad and influential career in show business. I knew only about Geffen Records going into this book, and it broadened my view of everything he’s been involved in, from helping produce Cats on Broadway to being one of the founders of DreamWorks. […]

“And it so angered me that I finally thought to myself, ‘Bitch, do something yourself instead of just sitting there getting angry. Do something.'”

Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit & Glamour of an Icon by Kate Andersen Brower

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What a fascinating life this woman led. I really feel like it would be pretty hard to come away from this book not liking Elizabeth Taylor as a human being. She loved fiercely, struggled publicly, and left a huge legacy that has helped millions of people, and continues to do so. I grew up in the 80s and 90s knowing who Elizabeth Taylor was, just like everyone else, because she was part of the zeitgeist, one of the most famous women ever to live. I […]



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