Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


And I for one welcome our new feathered overlords

The Story of Birds by Steve Brusatte

by 2 Comments

Like a lot of other elder millennials, I got very into birdwatching during the pandemic lockdowns, but I’ve always been interested in birds. I remember the first time I saw a bird and wanted to know more–a scarlet tanager at a nature center when I was a kid. In a time before cell phones, I couldn’t just look up what I’d seen. I had to describe it and my parents helped me find it in our Audubon’s Birds of North America guide. After that I […]

The wild world of wildlife

Grandmother Fish: A Child's First Book of Evolution by Jonathan Tweet and  Karen Lewis

Don't Eat the Cleaners!: Tiny Fish with a Big Job by Susan Stockdale

The Search for Carmella by Chloe Savage

by Leave a Comment

Education, CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge One Monday morning I get into work smidgen later than usual, so my whole system is just off. During a moment of situating myself, I see that there are some books on the cart for the children’s floor. On top of a pile was a book of a red colored fish. It said “Grandmother Fish” and I thought, “Well it could be a cute story.” However, I only saw the first part and not the whole title: Grandmother Fish: A […]

You’ll Be Examining More Than Just the Chicken and the Egg Here

From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves and the Meanings of Life by David Haig

by Leave a Comment

David Haig’s From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves and the Meanings of Life is probably not one of the most accessible books that I could close the year on—which is why I decided to make it my second last and not the last review of the year.  David Haig is an Australian biologist and current George Putnam Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. I first came across his work when reading up about genomic imprinting and maternal-fetal conflict. (These subjects are […]

A Subject With Many Facets

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

by Leave a Comment

Damn, sometimes you come across an author who’s skills you envy so much it hurts. Siddhartha Mukherjee is absolutely one of these authors. 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

by 2 Comments

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

by 4 Comments

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, “. […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo