Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“There’s a particular feeling in your body when something goes right after a long time of things going wrong. It feels warm and sweet and loose.”

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

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Lily King is a magician. She takes an unassuming title like Writers and Lovers and crafts something beautiful, messy, and utterly captivating. Her last novel, 2014’s Euphoria, was my favorite read of the last decade- I have to admit that I was initially disappointed when Writers and Lovers was announced after the evocative fever of Euphoria.  A 30-something woman navigates creative struggle, debt, grief, and relationships? All I have to do is shout out of my front door and a line of people that fit the description […]

Ode to the Idiot Box

I Like to Watch: Arguing my Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum

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I’m here because of the critics. The only reason I am even aware of the Cannonball Read is because I am a devotee of Pajiba’s cultural criticism. Roxana Hadadi, Kristy Puchko, and Kayleigh Donaldson have guided me to so many good films and books (at least two future Cannonball contributions) that they’ve become my Holy Trinity of artistic revelation. So, it’s probably appropriate that one of my first contributions to Cannonball is I Like to Watch: Arguing my Way Through the Television Revolution by Pulitzer […]

Literature was the passport to enter a larger life

At the Same Time by Susan Sontag

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Before I read this book I had a lot of name recognition for Susan Sontag (thank you liberal arts degree) but wasn’t that familiar with her actual writing.  At the Same Time is a collection of her essays and speeches, published posthumously in 2007, and comprising three categories: 1) essays about obscure literature; 2) essays about 9/11; and 3) speeches Sontag gave on varied themes (literature, courage, etc.). Given that the major unifying thread for this collection is loose- essay or speech- my opinions on […]

Well, I think I’ll go and oil my gun.

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Opening salvo, hot take: everything Tom Stoppard has ever written is incredible; this isn’t his best work. The Real Inspector Hound is the first live production of a Stoppard play I ever saw, followed about a year and a half later by Arcadia. So, I will always be grateful to Hound for preparing me, because otherwise Arcadia might have melted my brain, and working directly with Tom (humblebrag) on The Coast of Utopia would have been the actual death of me. Hound is a delight. […]

Totalitarianism, up close and personal in post-Mao China

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The Vagrants has got to be one of the grimmest novels I’ve read this year, and yet it is a book I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. The author grew up in Beijing of the late 1970s, the tumultuous post-Mao period in a China which had emerged from the horrific Cultural Revolution without plans to replace it with anything positive. The population was splintered between those whose humanity had been virtually destroyed by the bludgeon of Maoist doctrine, those who were struggling to enter the modern […]



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