Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A Subject With Many Facets

The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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Damn, sometimes you come across an author who’s skill you envy so much that it hurts. Siddhartha Mukherjee is abosolutly one of these. I wish I could communicate the intracies of biology in the way Mukherjee does, while keeping it both interesting and easy to digest. I sometimes struggle to do this in person, but in writing? It’s a daunting task.  Both of Mukherjee’s previous books— The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer; and The Gene: An Intimate History—are both excellent books, that […]

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I had such a good time with it.

Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke

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I haven’t written it yet, but I’m fairly certain this review will mostly be made up of quotes. That’s the reason I have been letting it hold up my review queue, because I haven’t had enough spoons to sit down and go through all my tabs [see below for picture] for my favorite bits, and then organize the bits into some sort of order, and then finally think up smart things to say about them. And if not smart, then at least entertaining. I picked […]

The sequel is never as good as the original

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex by Charles Darwin

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Back in 2020, I finished out the year by reviewing On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Since then, I’ve been trying to motivate myself to work my way through Darwin’s follow up: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Knowing that the ideas in Descent of Man were controversial, Darwin held off publishing until 12 years after Origin of Species. His thoughts on natural selection being well received, however, he felt comfortable proceeding to the next step, namely, “. […]

My 2020 Resolution and a Cannonball!

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin

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In December 2019, before we knew what the following months held in store, I made a New Year’s resolution to read On the Origin of Species. I have a beautiful folio edition that I received for my birthday, and I wanted to check it off my TBR list for a couple of reasons. First, as I’ve mentioned before, I learned as an adult how much I love science. Second, and more importantly, in a country where roughly 20% of adults reject the idea that humans […]

this novel, much like a duck’s uterus, is a tangle of paths and twists

Family of Origin by C. J. Hauser

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Nope- not just referencing duck biology on a whim; ducks and their inner workings are integral to this story! Labyrinthine reproductive parts, family secrets, climate change, and possible reverse evolution are wound together into a tight knot by C.J. Hauser, and it is up to you to untangle, smooth, and rearrange the beautiful mess within. If you are totally in the dark re: duck workings, please go and watch Isabella Rosellini’s Green Porno entry “Seduce Me”. Obviously NSFW, definitely educational AND fun! Half-siblings Elsa and […]

Advanced Bird Nerdery

The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird's Egg by Tim Birkhead

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With the exception, perhaps, of the most dedicated vegan, all of us have cracked open an egg at some point in our lives: to scramble for breakfast, to make an egg drop soup, or, for those more reckless in our diet, to whip up a rich creme brûlée. Yet how many of us have ever paused to wonder about the complex mechanisms that go into the creation of the egg itself? A 19th-century abolitionist named Thomas Wentworth Higginson once said, “If required on pain of death […]



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