Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A book about butts!

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke

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This was a fun book, just as the cover and (extremely good) title promised. Butts: A Backstory is a cultural microhistory of the butt that pretty much covers every aspect of it that you would want or expect it to. We start with the evolutionary purpose of the butt and then move on to such topics as: Sarah Baartman (“The Hottentot Venus”, and why everything about what happened to her and even that moniker is super racist and tragic); the impact of butts on fashion […]

take a look! it’s in *this* book!

The Library Book by Susan Orlean

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Why not take a break from the world with a strangely soothing tale of a library fire? That question appears to be pure chaos, but seriously: wouldn’t it be nice to let a meticulous journalist and storyteller narrate a well-researched account of history, memory, and true crime? Good news: you can do it! Just plug your headphones in and let Susan Orlean and The Library Book transport you to a different world. Orleans covers more than just the true-crime glitter that is strewn around the  […]

This book reminded me that I really need to start watching Masters of Sex

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

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3.5 stars I don’t read a whole lot of non-fiction. What little I do read is usually in the celebrity biography genre. But for my Eclectic Reader Challenge, I needed to read something qualifying as Micro history. I didn’t even know what that was, but the internet was very helpful in clearing up my confusion. Goodreads even has a lot of useful suggestions of what I could read. As Bonk had a fairly high average rating, and was very highly rated by several of my […]

“Gravitation is the lust of the cosmos.”

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach

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This book wasn’t exactly what I thought it was when I decided to read it. I thought Mary Roach would be writing from the perspective of what needs to be done/brought/invented to get us to a place where we are sending humans to live on Mars. What Roach really does is explain how the same things which had to be accomplished for basic space flight and putting a man on the moon are the things that scientists of various stripes are working on right now […]



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