Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“To be so ravenous with desperation that the only way out is complete and utter annihilation. A torpedo made of your own sharpened body.”- Senaa Ahmad (or me about wanting to quit this book)

The Age of Calamities: Stories by Senaa Ahmad

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I bought this book for two reasons: the New York Times highly recommended it, and I have always had a fascination with Anne Boleyn and one of the stories was said to feature her. And now you get a story by story commentary on how very much a mistake that decision was. Let’s Play Dead: Right off the bat we have the Anne Boleyn story, and right off the bat I loathe this book. Henry VIII has Anne Boleyn’s head chopped off and the next […]

Nelly and Elizabeth took a little trip

Nellie vs. Elizabeth: Two Daredevil Journalists' Breakneck Race Around the World by Kate Hannigan

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Nellie vs. Elizabeth: Two Daredevil Journalists’ Breakneck Race Around the World by Kate Hannigan and Rebecca Gibbon  on illustrations is a fun story about two very different women, but who found a way to make history. Nellie is Nellie Bly. Outgoing and willing to go three extra miles for the story. Elizabeth is Elizabeth Bisland. Shy and enjoys a good book. But both decided that to make news, they would have to go out and make it themselves. And since a little book by a […]

Live a Bold Life

Ten Days a Madwoman: The Daring Life and Turbulent Times of the Original “Girl” Reporter, Nellie Bly by Deborah Noyes

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  We’ve reached the first book of the year that I read expressly because it fit a Read Harder Challenge. Task number one is to read a YA non-fiction. I did not have any juvenile non-fiction on my 650 books deep to read list, so I had to go looking. Nellie Bly had recently come up at work and I realized I knew very little about the famous reporter beyond her time in Blackwell or her around the world trip so onto my library request […]

“I said I could and I would. And I did.”

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I learned about Nellie Bly the way I learn about most rule breaking, history making and forgotten women in history- through Drunk History. I was surprised to see that my library had Ten Days in a Mad House since it is essentially just her 1887 newspaper article. After reading Mad House, and really liking it, I sought out Around the World in Seventy-Two Days and found it for .99 on Kindle. I was less enthralled by Around the World- it’s pretty racist (a product of “the time”). Ten Days in a Mad House is […]

End in Sight

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Burden of Proof – 3/5 Stars So this is a second of the “Kindle County” series books that Turow has been publishing over the course of the last 30 years. I reviewed the first one a few months back. This a “legal thriller” and starts with Sandy Stern (of Argentine Jewish descent, which comes up, repeatedly) finding his wife dead in the garage of a possible suicide. There is a note but few clues as to what might have happened. Over the course of the […]



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