Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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We, Ourselves, and Us

Namesake by N. S. Nuseibeh

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It’s sometimes a strange feeling to live overseas. No matter how settled you feel, how well you feel you’ve gotten under the skin of where you are, there are always voices whispering how you’re not of that place. These whispers talk of ancestral roots and ideas of home that Nuseibeh constructs into a series of essays linking to the fierce Islamic warrior, Nusaybah.   Nuseibeh explores her own identity as much as the near mythical figure of Nusaybah.  Navigating multiple identities, a woman, a secular […]

If you’ve ever read David Sedaris, you know exactly what this is.

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris

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How different cultures view intellectuals and their place in society always fascinates me. In France, prime time TV; if such a thing still exists in the streaming age; features high-brow, thoughtful debate. It sounds great to some, but then every speech needs to start with “As Moliere once said…” so it’s not all win-win. The Anglophone world seems to me to view intellectualism, and by that I mean careful, considered thought and subsequent arguments, with a mixture of “Gosh, isn’t that person witty” (Oscar Wilde, […]

I live for the burning snap of a freshly carbonated beverage.

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. by Samantha Irby

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It turns out that I am not very good at making friends unless I am already trapped in an insufferable hellscape with someone who doesn’t mind my cracking a few inappropriate jokes as we circle life’s drain. ― Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Forget figuring out how many dates until it’s appropriate to have sex—I want to know how many we have to get through before it’s acceptable to stop. ― Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Have […]

“A part of Sinatra, no matter where he is, is never there.”

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold and Other Essays by Gay Talese

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This was a Christmas present from last year due to my interest in Frank Sinatra and other complicated mid-century men with bad tempers. It then sat for a while until I re-entered my interest phase, which only apparently took about a year. The titular essay is extremely well known as one of the main pieces of “New Journalism” and is hugely influential on celebrity profiles to this day. I used to get Esquire for many years and the profiles all sound like this. It was […]

“the same thing that we’re always seeking when we travel: to get outside of ourselves and imagine new possibilities”

The Best American Travel Writing 2020 by Jason Wilson (editor)

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One of this year’s Read Harder tasks was to read a “Best _ Writing of the year” book for a topic and year of your choice. I had a couple ideas and went perusing through my library catalog to see what I could come up with. And then I saw The Best American Travel Writing 2020 edited by Jason Wilson and the absurdity of these pandemic years meant that this one won out. Consider me intrigued to know what won out in a year that […]

Personal Essays on Horror, from a Queer Angle

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror by Joe Vallese (editor)

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When I saw that It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror came out this month I headed immediately to my library catalog to request it and then proceeded to consume it over three evenings. By and large this is an excellent collection of essays featuring queer authors of many stripes taking a movie, sometimes two, and either pulling them apart to discuss representation, or explain why they became fixated on a certain film, or how a film can help them process part of […]



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