Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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‘What happened to the frogs? We don’t hear them calling anymore.’

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

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This book is equal parts heartbreaking, infuriating, fascinating, and beautiful. It hits my sweet spot exactly between natural history, science, environmentalism, and travel writing (freaking Kolbert got to go to, off the top of my head, Australia, Germany, France, Peru, Panama, Iceland, Scotland, and Italy for this book, and I’m pretty sure I’m forgetting some). This genre is my catnip, and if I could trade lives with any author on the planet, well, it would probably be Michael Palin, actually, but Elizabeth Kolbert and Mary […]

Non-Fiction EOY Review Dump

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

Why We Swim by Bonnie Tsui

Real Queer America by Samantha Allen

Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly

Fed Up by Gemma Hartley

meaty by Samantha Irby

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

How To by Randall Monroe

Food by Jim Gaffigan

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I’m making a final push to wrap up CBR13 with my non-fiction review dump. I read more non-fiction this year than I thought I did, and I was never able to sum up my thoughts properly. I’m trying here, with just moments left!  Food | Jim Gaffigan Although I disagree with Mr. Gaffigan’s take on mustard, I still enjoyed reading Food. It’s a simple take on food — the good, the not so good, how it shapes us and our culture. It was extra light […]

The Sixth Extinction – Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)

The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert

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Whenever I read about climate change, I think about that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Picard to zapped into the consciousness of a man on a dying planet. It’s the one where he plays the fife. For me, maybe that’s where we are now, but there’s no space ships to save us from the oncoming doom. The pandemic has shown that when push comes to shove, that we might very well be doomed. I saw this from a American viewpoint, and maybe […]

True and terrifying

Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert

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This non-fiction account of the myriad causes, symptoms and impacts of global warming is the scariest thing I have read in years. Kolbert takes us from Alaska to Antarctica to illustrate the changes that humanity has wrought, and gives us glimpses into the staggering government inaction (George W. Bush) to small-scale hopes (Germany’s power grid).  In each chapter, Kolbert develops an increasingly claustrophobic picture of just how screwed we are, and how we need to alter course immediately.  As scary as the information that Kolbert […]



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