Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Grandmothers are special

Something about Grandma by Tania de Regil

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Julia goes to stay with her grandmother for the first time without her parents. And there is Something about Grandma and something about her house, the area she lives, the town and more. The things Julia does with her grandmother are different. They have sugar bread that is brought to them in a basket, that the lady delivery it places on her head.  There are different smells, colors and hot chocolate can cure homesickness. Her grandmother knows when Julia has picked limes from the garden, […]

What This Cruel War Is About

El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World's Most Infamous Drug Lord by Noah Hurowitz

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I’ve long avoided books about El Chapo, Mexican drug cartels, and other similar subjects because I think most US citizens have an outlandish view of how the drug trade actually works. In the brief encounters with Mexican drug cartels in fiction, the gangsters are portrayed as overly-tattooed, desperately violent and almost amoral. While there are, of course, shades of that in real life, it also shows a cartoonish image as an avatar for the average North American citizen’s inability to grapple with how its racist drug […]

Narcos

The Cartel by Don Winslow

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Years ago, I read Robert Andrew Powell’s This Love Is Not For Cowards. Powell, a US journalist moved to Juarez, Mexico at the time when it was the most dangerous metropolitan area on earth. He did it to follow the local football (soccer) team, learn about its fan culture and what it meant to be so devout to a team while existing in a war zone. A scene from that book has stuck with me almost ten years since I read it. Powell reports on a shooting […]

Soldier For Fortune

Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler and the Making and Breaking of the American Empire by Jonathan M. Katz

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An excellent read and an infuriating read. Worth all five stars. And like Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction and Ackerman’s Reign of Terror, you’re guaranteed to be peeved on every page. I knew the United States had a colonizing history dating back, well really to its foundation through the US-Mexican War of the 1840s, but more specifically from the end of the 19th century onwards. I knew that we captured many islands in the Caribbean and Pacific respectively, even if I didn’t know the hows-and-whys. Jonathan M. Katz does […]

Go talk your weird love to the wind

Thirty Talks Weird Love by Alessandra Narvaez Varela

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When I first started to read Thirty Talks Weird Love my first thought was, “Well this is crap.” But I realized I was tired and told myself to go to bed. That is the main thing you need to know about Alessandra Narvaez Varela’s book: be rested. This book is an emotional rollercoaster and if you are the tiniest bit uncomfortable or not in a good headspace, do not try this book. The journey of finding and being perfection, and how we see ourselves are […]

Dirty War

Velvet Was The Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Read as Part of CBR13Bingo: Rec’d. Inspired by Emmalita’s review.  This one is a tough one to review. I really wish both Cannonball Read and Goodreads had half stars. This is a solid 3.5. I’m giving it the bump to 4 but just barely. I appreciated Emmalita’s review and others I’ve read. BookMarks collected mostly rave reviews about this book. At times, I felt like it elevated itself. The feeling of Mexico City in the 70s, political tension, Cold War flashpoint was real. The two […]



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