Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A wonderful introduction to the writing of Kate Canterbary

The Worst Guy by Kate Canterbary

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4.5 stars Sebastian Stremmel is a trauma surgeon at a large Boston hospital, rumoured to be the chief of staff’s pick for the next chief of surgery. He’s also known to be grumpy, rather antisocial, and a workaholic. Sara Shapiro is an introverted plastic surgeon working at the same hospital who forces herself to be cheerful and friendly in public to hide her own social anxiety and unease around others. Sebastian finds Sara annoyingly chirpy, she finds him unbelievably rude and arrogant. They try to […]

Maud: Meet Cannonball Read. Cannonball Read: Meet Maud.

Meet Maud the Koala by Jennifer E. Morris

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The other day, several books dropped on my foot. After a few frails and dressings were uttered, it became clear that one of those little darlings turned out to be a skinny (though pointy cornered) beginning graphic novel called Meet Maud the Koala by Jennifer E. Morris. Looking at it I asked myself, “Self. Why did you buy this book?” I answered myself, “Maybe because it has a Koala Bear? You like Koalas.” Regardless of the why, I figured that this was a sign to […]

Stockholm syndromed by a crappy book.

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It’s hard for me to know exactly what I’m reviewing when I review this book. It was my first audiobook, and the narrator was awful. Am I really reviewing the concept of audiobooks, new to me after 24 years as an avid reader? Am I reviewing the narrator, kind of? Or the book? One thing is certain: the latter two things were terrible. So I guess it really doesn’t matter. Dr. Mike Scanlon is a podiatrist serving in the Army, repairing feet blown up by […]

Not just a plot twist, but an entire genre twist!

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Full disclosure: I don’t know how to talk about this book without spoiling something about it, but it will be a general spoiler, not specific at all and I think that knowing this thing going in may actually improve your enjoyment of it (it would’ve improved mine, anyway). This is another recommendation from my grandmother, aka the elderly badkittyuno, and it was a major improvement over the last one. (If you’re assuming it’s a medical memoir like I did, nope. It’s a novel.) Dr. Heaton […]

Another problematic medical memoir.

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  This is the second problematic medical memoir I’ve read in as many weeks. Dr. Austin is an ER doctor, and his book is probably 70% standard stuff for these kinds of books – patient anecdotes and ruminations on the meaning of things. I’ve read…a lot of those books. The other 30% focuses on the impact of shift work and burnout on his family life. The 70% I loved. It was reasonably well-written, and you’d have to go out of your way to make the […]

90% great, 10% WHAT?!

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Bedside Manners is a series of essays/vignettes about the encounters between doctors and patients, mostly. All but a couple are clearly intended to be true and from the perspective of Dr. Watts, who is a gastroenterologist. (The couple that seem to be about some other doctor are weird.) His writing is prosey and nice, and stories fly by, and the subject matter is surprisingly interesting. (Not that I’m surprised that the 6,049,284th medical memoir I’ve read was interesting. But he’s a gastroenterologist.) Are you hearing […]



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