Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go”

Elvis and Me (1985) by Priscilla Presley with Sandra Harmon

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Content note for book and review: Grooming, addiction, domestic violence So I’ve recently got into writer/comedian/actress Chelsea Devantez‘s podcast Glamorous Trash, which does deep dives into celebrity memoir and generally unpacking celebrity myth making and narratives in a funny, thoughtful, sometimes poignant, and very incisive and sympathetic way. I listened to the episodes about the memoirs I’d read, and then ordered a bunch more that looked interesting to read before listening to their episodes. (Do other people approach podcasts like book series/binge-watching, whereby they listen […]

“Eddie, if you’d never done anything but this, I’d be proud all my life.”

Take My Life by Eddie Cantor with Jane Kesner Ardmore

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I really loved this memoir and it made me cry on the train, which is quite an achievement given how much I hate crying in public transit. I had never heard of Eddie Cantor before I picked this up randomly in a used bookstore due to the cover, but his dedication to charity fundraising and his kind nature come through very strongly in this book. He had raised over $280 million for charity at the time he wrote this (1957), which given inflation is just […]

“I started out in a green house with a red door in a small town, where mysteries abounded.”

Born With Teeth by Kate Mulgrew

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Voyager is my favorite Star Trek series so I was interested to read this book and learn more about Kate Mulgrew’s life. She is a very lyrical writer with a great eye for detail — having read other celebrity memoirs before, you can tell when one is ghostwritten and this one read as if it was purely her own effort. She has a strong voice and is able to really capture a scene and the elements that make it powerful. Her writing elevates this beyond […]

DNF Part 1: Crossing these off my list

The Greek Myths by Robert Graves

Troy by Stephen Fry

I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom

Paris Dallencourt Is About to Crumble by Alexis Hall

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Here is the first batch of “did not finish” for CBR 15. Troy by Stephen Fry The audio book was 11 hours. Listened to about half of it. Skipped quite a bit. Still didn’t finish it. I read Mythos and thought that the audiobook version of Troy would be easier to digest. It was not. Greek Myths by Robert Graves This is basically an encyclopedia of Greek myths. Maybe you can use this as some sort of reference material. But I could not get through […]

Failing up and into my heart

Party of One by Dave Holmes

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“What to the untrained eye looked like vegging out in front of the television was actually me silently plotting a way to crawl inside.” “Looking back, I think my family raised me right. There were probably some lessons about decency and fairness and manners in there somewhere – who can remember? – but the main thing my parents and brothers taught me by example was how to appreciate pop culture and music. I want to thank them and also explain to them that I am […]

A Terribly Sad Book That Probably Shouldn’t Have Been Written at This Point in Time

Spare by Prince Harry

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Honestly, where to begin with this one considering the amount of ink already spilled about it and the endless interviews. I am coming at this from the point of view of someone most interested in pre-WWI royalty, and as someone who is interested in the generational reverberations of child abuse. I am not that invested in who is right in the current generational struggle or really in any of the individuals in this book, and I tried to approach my reading with a fairly open […]



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