Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Finance Bro Mass Delusion

The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend by Rob Copeland

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Ray Dalio became globally famous as the head of an innovative hedge fund and his Principles, which he purported would lead to inevitable success when followed. But behind the scenes at Bridgewater Associates was a bizarre, dysfunctional workplace culture. I vaguely remember hearing about the utter weirdness of Bridgewater Associates before, but Wall Street is not really an area of interest for me. I picked this book up though because of this review by J, which whetted my appetite with promises of crazy workplace drama […]

It’s Only a Matter Of…

Trust by Hernan Diaz

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Read as part of CBR14Bingo: Dough. The book involves a man who makes a lot of money (“dough”) off the stock market in the 20s and 30s and how stories revolve around him. I was excited to get this one given both the premise and reviews. I have a yen for these kinds of neo-Gatsby stories set in the early part of the 20th century that examine finance and/or gangsterism juxtaposed with the American Dream. Legs by William Kennedy qualifies for this label, as does Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan […]

The Banks Are Bad

Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction by David Enrich

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You know the eye pop emoji that people share when they read something incredible? I feel like you could have laid that one out on just about every ten pages in this book. My word. I didn’t know much about Deutsche Bank before Donald Trump, mostly because they don’t have a presence for American peons like me. Even after, I only had the stomach to learn so much. I assumed they did shady stuff to help Trump get away with shady stuff, etc. There’s that […]

“I’m no expert, but I remember reading somewhere, every time you retrieve a memory, that act of retrieval, it corrupts the memory a little bit. Maybe changes it a little.”

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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This book is highly readable. While it may appear that I am damning with faint praise, that is not my intention. This book is readable because, despite being filled with topics and characters that do not automatically appeal to me, I was interested and invested from page one. Had this book not been written by Emily St. John Mandel I probably would have glanced at the dust jacket and gone on my merry way, but since it was written by her I knew that I […]

The world is full of garbage people.

The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis

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So, I don’t mean the world is full of people made of garbage.  I mean that many human beings, too many (though that is probably subjective), are living embodiments of Mos Eisely, wretched hives of scum and villainy.  These two books by Michael Lewis are about those people. The Big Short, now a movie that I have not seen, is about the people who, in a way, foresaw the financial recession of 2008 and profited from it.  Immensely.  Funny though, those people are not the […]

Greed Is In

Dear Money by Martha McPhee

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Read as part of CBR11 Bingo: Re-telling of a classic. The book was inspired by “Pygmalion.” This book is a mess but it is a very entertaining mess. It’s basically The Big Short filtered through the lens of a needy, greedy Manhattan mom. Perhaps because of my enduring love for Manhattan, I never seem to tire of New York City tales. Even ones that are as bleak and insufferable as this one. I found myself relating to India more than I would have liked. Sure, she has […]



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