Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

The People Make the Place

The New Yorkers: 31 Remarkable People, 400 Years, and the Untold Biography of the World's Greatest City by Sam Roberts

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New York City has seen nearly a billion inhabitants in its 400 year long history, and a great many of them have been very remarkable. But there are also many how had an indelible impact on the city, even if they are mostly forgotten today. I do not like New York City. I am a Bostonian through and through. But I’ve been there many times, and I must admit that there is really no other place like it. The city has a strange essence to […]

“Buddy Rich once told me that he was the loneliest man in the universe.”

The Torment of Buddy Rich: A Biography by John Minahan

Traps, The Drum Wonder: The Life of Buddy Rich by Mel Torme

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CBR14Bingo: Minds (I read both of these as I continued my personal psychological study of Buddy Rich’s mind) Buddy Rich is arguably the best drummer to ever live. I was first introduced to his work about a year ago when he was mentioned in a biography of Frank Sinatra I was reading; the two of them had at least one fistfight when they were in Tommy Dorsey’s band together. As I have a fascination with mid-century men with terrible tempers (Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster) I […]

The Complicated Splinter

The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee, Jr.

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Read as part of CBR14Bingo: star. Ted Williams was one of the biggest stars in baseball history and this biography is worthy of him. When I read Leigh Montville’s Ted Williams: The Biography of An American Hero about ten years ago, I figured that would be the end of my journey with the life of the Splendid Splinter. I liked reading about Williams, I find him interesting, but I didn’t need more than one 500+ page work on his life. When Ben Bradlee, Jr. dropped this 775 page tome […]

August 2022 Leftovers

Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy

Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Man Who Liked to Look at Himself by K.C. Constantine

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris

Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees by Bob Klapisch and Pete Solotaroff

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Finley Ball: How Two Outsiders Turned the Oakland As into a Dynasty and Changed Baseball Forever by Nancy Finley

Sea Change by Robert B. Parker

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

Ms. Tree, Volume 1 by Max Alan Collins

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Some extra books I read in August. What a miserably hot month… Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood**** Less a conventional biopic on The Mick and more a look at his life vis-a-vis his legend and the backdrop of postwar America. Not as thorough as I would’ve liked but still riveting given how Jane Leavy presents her subject.   Greenwich Park*** Again glad I slept on my review. I really liked how this started but after a while, it morphed into […]

Queen of the Nile

Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth by Francine Prose

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Francine Prose tells the story of Cleopatra (VII Philopater, if you want to be specific), her entanglement with the Roman Empire, and how she has become distorted in cultural depictions after her death. In a way, I am reading this book in preparation – I’ve got the reading of a retelling of Cleopatra’s life set in space (!) coming up, and I figured that I’d appreciate it more if I gave myself a better grounding of the historical subject matter first. Also, I’ve always found […]

This artist made me want to see the world

The Illustrators: Miroslav Sasek by Martin Salisbury

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Cbr14bingo Minds I think this review fits the category since the book explores the life and work of artist Miroslav Sasek. It is the story of a creative mind. When I was little, my parents kept our books in a cupboard right outside my bedroom. I used to sneak out after bedtime, grab some books and bring them back into my room to read. Among those books were several of Miroslav Sasek’s “This Is …” travel books for children. I loved them and still have […]



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