Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“You’ll never understand the way the worlds really work until you surround yourself with people from all sorts of weird backgrounds.”

Saga: Volume Four by Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Fiona Staples (artist)

Saga: Volume Five by Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Fiona Staples (artist)

Saga: Volume Six by Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Fiona Staples (artist)

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The Saga re-read continues. I’m still in love with this series. It’s rare to have humor, sorrow, wit, action, adventure, and beautiful drawings married in one text, but this is that text. Volume Four would be my sole four star rated volume, but I am refusing to grade these against themselves, they are collectively some of the best storytelling I have read and will all be given five stars, regardless of swings in execution from volume to volume. That said, while I’m sure that the plot […]

“Finding people is a problem the Enlightenment was poised to solve.”

The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power by Deirdre Mask

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The Address Book is one of many published in early 2020 which likely suffered from a distracted world. Early 2020 was a rough time to publish and attempt to publicize a book. But thanks to lists of books you missed I’m glad this one came to my attention. Separately, recognizing Hollywood, Florida the city next to my hometown listed alongside much larger cities seemed a perfectly good reason to add this book to my reading list. If you think about street addresses, it is likely […]

“Finding the ocean was as simple a matter as letting a river lead you in the direction it wanted to go most.”

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers

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This one didn’t make me cry nearly as much as its predecessor, Psalm for the Wild-Built, but that shouldn’t make you think that it didn’t have an emotional impact, it did make me tear up on more than one occasion. Because this novella is a meditation on what we call the human condition. It is also a look at how we can live if society puts happiness and contentment first. If we don’t compete but instead cooperate. But its also the kind of novella that […]

Opposites Attract Enemies to Friends to Lovers

The Stand-up Groomsman by Jackie Lau

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I know a Jackie Lau romance is going to make my heart happy. In some ways The Stand-up Groomsman is a departure from the types of Lau books I’ve enjoyed in the past. In this follow up to last year’s Donut Fall in Love Lau takes a more serious tone and unpacks some bigger emotional truths, in this case how we handle expectations and how it interacts with larger family dynamics. But in most ways, this is almost exactly the type of book I’ve come […]

“True, I played, fought and studied with other children, but always I stood apart within… A cosmic loneliness was my shadow.”

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

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When Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston was published in 2002 it was the first comprehensive biographical work on Zora Neale Hurston in more than twenty-five years, and while there were books that followed quickly behind it, Wrapped in Rainbows feels like the definitive work on its subject. I was familiar with Hurston’s life before picking this up – she hangs large in the world of Florida writers – but there was still plenty left for me to know, and nuance and […]

“Outrage is conditioned not by the nature of the atrocity but by the affiliation of the victim and the perpetrator”

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

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After having read two of his books in (relatively) quick succession I can say with full confidence that Patrick Radden Keefe is an excellent writer and a dogged journalist. He was starting with topics that I wanted to read about, even if they were difficult, but he was able to draw me in in ways I wasn’t expecting and achieved more than I had anticipated. Say Nothing Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland takes on the bitter conflict in […]



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