Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Life is always happening and has happened and will happen

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan

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One of Chekhov’s earliest stories was a parody of mental arithmetic questions asked of schoolchildren, of which Chekhov’s question 7 is typical: Wednesday, June 17, 1881, a train had to leave station A at 3am in order to reach station B at 11pm; just as the train was about to depart, however, an order came that the train had to reach station B by 7pm. Who loves longer, a man or a woman? Who? You, me, a Hiroshima resident or a slave labourer? And why […]

Interesting But Not Personal Enough

Alex and Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence--and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene Pepperberg

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If I had heard of Alex the African gray prior to reading this, I can’t recall. I also don’t know how I ended up with the book on my Kindle, but I’m glad I read it. Pepperberg spent decades studying cognition in African gray parrots. She developed a love of birds early in her life when she was gifted a parakeet, which helped soothe her lonely childhood. When she decided she wanted to discover whether “bird brain” is as pejorative as it sounds, she purchased […]

Louder Than Life? No Kidding!

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  One of the unexpected joys I’ve discovered since I’ve started listening to audiobooks is the self-narrated biography or memoir. There is just something about hearing the voice of the subject that really enhances the experience.  This is especially so for biographies written by entertainers and performers, who naturally make excellent narrators. So far, I have enjoyed biographies read and written by Alexei Sayle, Eddie Izzard, Magda Szubanski and David Attenborough. But there is only one so far that I would say HAS to be […]

Alli Reviews “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth”

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Well, here I am again in CBR. After completing a full Cannonball a few years back (on my third attempt), I signed up for CBR but didn’t really participate, although I still read a fair amount of books, I think the writing part provokes my anxiety a bit. Having said that, I am taking a PR diploma and it requires a fair amount of writing so the more practice I can get the better. Plus you all are a fairly tolerant lot, so the judgements […]

Adventures of a Mormon looking for love in Manhattan

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When I first saw this book in Borders, I was intrigued by the cover and when I read about a Mormon gal on her own in the Big Apple, I was even further intrigued. Given that I just name-dropped Borders, that’ll give you an idea of how long ago it was that I picked it up. Pretty sure it was around 2010. But something made me keep it through a move from New Jersey to Mississippi, then back to New Jersey. Then to Memphis. Then […]

A real look into sexism through humor and real life – no fuss, no muss

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Although I am a somewhat recent convert into the world of strong female celebrity memoirs, I have recently read had 3 of them read to me by the authors through the fascinating experience that are audiobooks, and I must admit I have been converted. It’s always a breath of fresh air to have an intelligent woman talk to/at you for 4-6 hours about funny little anecdotes that may or may not carry some underlying lesson about the world. In the spirit of full disclosure, I have […]



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