Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

A Dictionary Into Which a Left-Handed Monkey Wrench Has Been Thrown

The Left Handed Dictionary by Leonard Louis Levinson

by 8 Comments

Thursday July 30 is “Paperback Book Day,” celebrating the first books published in paperback by Penguin Publishing Co. back in 1835. Many years ago (but not as far back as that) when I was in 8th grade, I received this gem of a paperback from the assistant principal of my middle school. The Left Handed Dictionary is a slim little volume filled with quotations and organized in dictionary format. The cover descriptions say it comprises: 5,000 hip definitions that once tripped gaily off the slightly forked […]

June 2024 Leftovers

The First Quarry by Max Allan Collins

Kings of the Garden: The New York Knicks and Their City by Adam J. Criblez

Out On The Cutting Edge by Lawrence Block

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Nevada by Imogene Binnie

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford Dictionary by Simon Winchester

Exalted by Anna Dorn

by Leave a Comment

Happy Pride to all who celebrate! The First Quarry**** I was disappointed in the quality of the last couple of Quarry novels so I wasn’t expecting much…but this was good. One of his best plots and I really enjoyed it. Could’ve done without the racism. Big believer that you can show the casual racism of the past (1970s) without wallowing in it and the book does that. Otherwise, it’s good. Kings of the Garden: The New York Knicks and Their City**** Stretching a four star […]

“It’s a calming thing, to learn there’s a word for something you’ve felt all your life, but didn’t know was shared by anyone else.”

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig

by Leave a Comment

That sentence from the introduction of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows sums up what this book is about. A dictionary of “made-up” words (I know, as if there are words growing naturally in the wild somewhere), it gives voice to the thoughts and feelings that we have every day but didn’t know anyone else shared. Part linguistics, part philosophy, part self-help, and a (very little) part humor, this book will make you feel, above all else, that somebody out there gets you. Author John Koenig […]

I wanted to like this one so bad!

The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams

by Leave a Comment

Mallory is a lowly intern at Swansby’s Encyclodpaedic Dictionary in present day. Her main job is to answer the phone and be berated by some anonymous troll who is upset that dictionary definitions are changing. Specifically, the definition of marriage. Tension at work is compounded by the fact that Mallory herself is gay and not out, and this troll has now called in a bomb threat. Oh, and she’s just been tasked with going through an entire encyclopedia from the 1920s and finding all of the […]

Very specific historical non-fiction

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers by Elizabeth Cobbs

by Leave a Comment

Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman was a fun little footnote of history expanded into an interesting book. The Oxford English Dictionary is THE authority for words in the english language and this book describes what was essentially the invention of dictionaries and the significance that had. The compilation of words for the dictionary required a massive effort so Professor James Murray requested the assistance of the public. That’s when Dr. W. C. Minor began contributing words and first usages to the OED.  Minor […]

The Oxford English Dictionary Was Basically Wikipedia

by 1 Comment

Fans of Comedy Central’s tv show “Drunk History” may be familiar with the story of Dr. William Minor: The Civil War doctor showed signs of struggling with mental health during and after the war (how could one not), and moved to London for a fresh start. Unfortunately, Dr. Minor suffered from the beliefs that all kinds of people were out to get him, and those beliefs led him to shoot an innocent stranger in cold blood. The American was institutionalized.  Concurrently, Professor James Murray was […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo