Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Power and the Written Word

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern by Jing Tsu

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I once had a housemate who tried to teach me some simplified Chinese written characters (hanzi). Nothing too complex, just me 我, you 你, coffee 咖啡 and tea 茶, so on and so forth. But even with such an easy lesson, I realized that some connections were harder to make than others. I was able to match the the vocalization to the meaning: Wǒ is I/me. And I would see 我 written on the page and go ahead and think ‘yes, that’s I/me’. But that […]

The Politics of Being a Medical Examiner and Coroner

L.A. Coroner by Anne Soon Choi

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Note: I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. L.A. Coroner is about as much about the politics of criminal investigation as it is a biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, Chief Medical Examiner in LA from 1967 to 1982. That time frame means he was the one in charge of doing the autopsies and some other forensic investigating for the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, victims of the Manson Family, Janis Joplin, and other celebrities. I have little […]

Bodies Are Political, and So Is What We Put on Them

Dressed for Freedom: The Fashionable Politics of American Feminism by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox

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Fashion may seem to be concerned entirely with pop culture, but the way people choose to dress can make a statement about their politics, and feminists over the 20th century have made ample use of this fact. You’d think it should be obvious, with how “the personal is political,” but it was definitely eye-opening to see how deeply fashion and feminism have been entwined, used by both those for and against it to make their point. Despite the cliches about the ‘ugly, man-hating feminist,’ many […]

A Kids Book About Israel & Palestine

A Kids Book About Israel & Palestine by Reza Aslan

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I bought this for the children’s room I work in. And then I read it, because I am very much an “explain it to me like I’m six years old” person. The book very simply lays out the facts that led to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have been fairly outspoken about Palestinian rights, and most of my Jewish friends have been too, but I have some who stand up for Israel and I am trying to understand why. I don’t know that the book sold […]

“It may be said of some very old places, as of some very old books, that they are destined to be forever new. The nearer we approach them, the more remote they seem: the more we study them, the more we have yet to learn. “

Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age by Kathleen Sheppard

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In the so-called Golden Age of Egyptology, it was men who were known world-wide as the archeologists and academics who wrestled the secrets of Ancient Egypt from the desert, carrying away much of what they found. In this book, Sheppard turns the spotlight on female Egyptologists, who had less recognition but were equally instrumental in the early days of the discipline. I’m not very familiar with Egyptology in the Gilded Age beyond Howard Carter’s famous “Yes, wonderful things!” and a vague understanding of how the […]



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