Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Coming into the Light

The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake

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I enjoyed this novel both because of its heroine, Nora Beady, but also for all the interesting details about the practice of medicine in the mid 19th century–fascinating and horrifying in equal measures. Nora is the ward of a famous British surgeon, Horace Croft, who saved her from a cholera infection that killed her whole family when she was a child.  Croft is brilliant and eccentric and that may be why he encourages Nora’s interest in biology, anatomy, and medicine, even though in mid 19th […]

A History of Royal Intermarriage and its Consequences

Royal Inbreeding and Other Maladies by Juliana Cummings

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Royalty was supposed to rule by divine right and meant to preserve their bloodline, but in their zeal to do so lay the seeds of the madness and maladies that plagued many royal houses. It’s always fun to read about mad royals. Removed by time and societal changes, they don’t feel real enough to be sorry for, and so you can fully indulge in ogling at the bizarre stories without shame. And with unlimited money and power at their disposal, there’s a lot of bizarre […]

Between the Freeze and the Thaw

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

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When midwife Martha Ballard is called to inspect the body of a man found frozen in the Kennebec River, the last person she expects it to be is the accused rapist of one of her patients – and when she determines that he has been murdered, the situation only becomes more complex. I first heard about Martha Ballard a few months ago, when I picked up the Pulitzer Prize-winning book based on her life (A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her […]

People Who Made a Difference” Or “People Who Tried”

Joey: The Story of Joe Biden by Jill Biden and Kathleen Krull

Dr. Fauci: How a Boy from Brooklyn Because America's Doctor by Kate Messner

King Of Ragtime: The Story of Scott Joplin by Stephen Costanza

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I do not care what you think about Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, or Scott Joplin (he fits my theme, if not a smidgen loosely, which is “People Who Made a Difference” Or “People Who Tried”), but these books are really cool. Okay, not “cool” as in The Fonz was cool or a snowman is cool, but in the way that a good book can be cool. Each of the below titles (though all are available, I read via online reader copies) talks about how […]

I’m not gonna lie. I came for the “monsters.”

Dr. Mütter's Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovations at the Dawn of Modern Medicine by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

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CBR15 BINGO: North America, because Thomas Dent Mütter was an American physician, and his museum is located in Philadelphia, PA. When I heard there was a book about Thomas Mütter, I knew I had to read it. Some years ago I visited the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, which is a museum of medical history that “displays its beautifully preserved collections of anatomical specimens, models, and medical instruments in a nineteenth-century ‘cabinet museum’ setting.” A quick walk through the museum’s site should give you an idea […]

Blueberry Muffin Brains and lots of other stuff

The Body A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson

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I started The Body A Guide for Occupants about a year ago; I had kind of a pattern starting the year off with a science book of some sort. This year, I guess I’m also ending with one. This book is on the one hand pretty readable since the science is explained in some detail without getting too technical; my last biology class was well over a decade ago. On the other hand, it’s also incredibly dense, making it sort of hard to read for […]



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