Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam for layfolks

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by James Martin

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Every now and again, there’s a picture of David Tenant that pops up on social media where he’s taking a selfie at a con, and there’s some guy just next to him with his nose in his phone. The caption is almost always some suggestion of what the other guy is missing being that close to a celebrity and not knowing it.  Here’s my version of that, kind of. I kind of remember the final time I graduated that the Commencement speaker was referred to […]

Forest Euphoria: Mostly memoir but with cool (and some bummer) queer nature facts

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

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I have been in the throes of moving and unpacking for the last 6 weeks (give or take), so reading has been slow and distracted. Even getting through this 6 hour audiobook took 2 weeks, and I was certainly distracted through most of it. So definitely take this review with a grain of salt. The book seems to be broken down in the sections that match a set of anecdotes from the author’s life with thematically similar creatures in nature that highlight queerness, diversity in […]

Between the Accident and the Incident

Curse of the Blumenthals by Phyllis Karas

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Three generations of journalist Phyllis Karas’s family are marked by two great tragedies – the car crash which killed six members of the family, and the murder committed by the first grandchild born after that accident hardly twenty years later. This is an interesting mash-up of a book – part family history, part true crime, and sometimes even a scrapbook. Karas dives into the crimes which impacted her family, whether they were those who committed them or the victims, studying how their effects rippled through […]

The American Female Q

In True Face: A Woman's Life in the CIA, Unmasked by Jonna Méndez

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Jonna began her work at the CIA as a ‘career wife,’ supporting her husband’s job, but soon she started taking on bigger and important roles in the agency, for which she lived all over the world and eventually rose to the position of Chief of Disguise. Having read plenty about the CIA’s origins as the OG old boy’s club in which a lot of men threw ideas at a wall and hoped they’d stick during World War 2, this book was interesting to me for […]

I read two books in a row called “Savage [Something]”

Savage Appetites: True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe

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As a whole, I’m not as mad about true crime as many women are – though I’ve certainly been compelled by various stories over the years. Unpacking some of my childhood media memories (Tonya Harding, OJ Simpson, etc) led me to You’re Wrong About, and I also love Criminal – both because they pick interesting stories but offer a good mix. I can’t just do murder stories all the time. But I’ve been researching the genre for a project, and I heard Monroe quoted on […]

Reasons why this is a cookbook not for me, at least not at this time

Good Things by Samin Nosrat

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Sometimes it’s pretty clear when a book is probably just fine, but maybe not for you, or at least you right now. Good Things by Samin Nosrat has some good things going for it. It’s got a lot of parts where there ar basically sets of theme and variation on a recipe or ingredient which can be nice when you’ve got a lot of something but don’t want to get bored. The premise of focusing on kind of simple pleasures is also something I can […]



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