Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

There needs to be a happy medium…

Advise and Consent by Allen Drury

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I seem to do one of two things when writing a review. In the first instance, I try cobbling together my thoughts weeks or months after reading a book (a failed experiment that I keep trying), and unloading the errant thoughts I have while reading, or I write as I read and end up writing way more than any reasonable person wants to read. You can always tell the difference because one review is 5,000 words while the other is usually a short review dump […]

To Bomb Atomically

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

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One of my all-time favorite movies is The Hunt for Red October. I can never get over one of those opening scenes where the Red October’s political officer is reading from a book owned by ship captain Marko Raimius, played by Sean Connery. The officer reads the line “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” I still recall their exchange, with Connery doing his parts in his typical gravelly patrician tone: Connery: It was said by an American. PO: American? Connery: Mmmhmm. He invented the atomic […]

Theater During the Red Scare

The Chelsea Girls by Fiona Davis

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I think it was either jomidi’s review of this novel specifically or Caitlin D’s more general review of Fiona Davis’s novels but I ended up downloading The Chelsea Girls a while back.  By the time I started reading it, I didn’t quite remember what the overall story line was beyond being set in New York during the mid-20th century and involving female friendships.  I was very pleasantly surprised when I realized this wasn’t simply a story about young women navigating life in a big city […]

It’s about the Monkey Trial but so much more

Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

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Cbr11bingo History/schmistory Inherit the Wind, the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, was inspired by the “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925. That real historic event brought the attention of the nation to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, as two titans — William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow — battled in a courtroom over the place of Darwin’s theory of evolution in the classroom. This matter, sadly, is still debated today, which makes the play as timely as ever. Yet, Inherit the Wind […]

The Golden Notebook: A Novel by Doris Lessing

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There is a part of me that feels brazen and shameless for daring to write reviews of literary classics. Who am I to judge Tolstoy’s War and Peace, for example (which I did for Cannonball Read 5)? The Golden Notebook is another such a book, but it is also one of those novels that I have wanted to read because it appears on so many “must read” lists, particularly among feminists. So I will boldly proceed with this review in the hope that I do […]



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