Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Everyday Jewish Lives Divided by Time

Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World by Jane Ziegelman

Matzah Ball Blues by Jennifer Wilck

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I did not mean to make it a Jewish double feature, but I just happened to read these books around the same time, and it was interesting to see the same traditions discussed in a historical context and then in an average middle-class family from New Jersey. Once There Was a Town by Jane Ziegelman – 3 stars After the Holocaust, since entire shtetls had been reduced to just a handful of survivors, people across continents came together to put together yizkor books to record […]

“We had no shield. I had to become one.”

Queen of Exiles by Vanessa Riley

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After the death of her husband and the coup ousting her family from power in the new nation of Hayti, Queen Marie-Louise Christophe and her daughters flee to Europe, where they must learn how to navigate a racist society as Black royalty. I’ve been excited to read this book, because it follows a woman and an area of history I’m not familiar with, and because as a Black monarch, I knew Louise would provide a radically new perspective on the Regency period, which I’ve read […]

“His memory, like the world’s, was getting spotty.”

Hiroshima by John Hersey

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Originally a long-form article written in 1946, this is the story of six survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, with a follow up from decades on documenting the ups and downs of the survivors’ lives. This far on from the event, the enormity of the effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is commonly known, even if it’s still playing out even today. As such it’s rather hard to fully understand how much of a sensation this book was at the time […]

Golden Girls with Feet of Clay

The It Girls by Caroline Young

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Nowadays, when one thinks of someone who’s “famous for being famous,” one thinks of the Kardashians or Instagram influencers. But the phenomenon of the It girl is a long and storied one. I read this at about the same time as I read Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century, and they work pretty well as companions – that book describing trendsetting fashion, and this book describing the trendsetters themselves. Young tells the story of It girls through the centuries, who hold such diverse […]

Skirts Just Look So Good on Us!

Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell

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Fashion can say a lot about the people that wear it and the places they occupy in time and space. As such, women starting to wear pants is a shorthand for progress in feminism – but, Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell argues, the evolution of skirts over the twentieth century too has plenty to say. Like the author, I wear a lot of dresses and skirts, mostly because they are an easy way to look like you’ve made an effort, and also let you slouch and lounge around […]

Hubris and the British Empire, a Match Made in Heaven

Erebus: The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin

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Erebus tells the story of the eponymous ship, part of the British Imperial navy at the height of its power. Though it was originally meant for combat, it was used for exploration – polar exploration, to be precise. It was first sailed to the south pole by James Clark Ross, with its sister ship HMS Terror, for a very successful exploration: geographical landmarks still bear their names (Mount Terror and Mount Erebus). However, the ships’ glory came to an abrupt halt several years later in […]



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