Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.”

Heartburn: A Novel by Nora Ephron

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Heartburn is a short humorous novel about an unfunny topic — a marriage falling apart. It is based on true events — Ephron’s marriage to Carl Bernstein and his infidelity. The main character and narrator is Rachel Samstat, a cookbook author and TV personality married to Mark Feldman, a prominent syndicated journalist. Both Rachel and Mark are on their second marriages, and Rachel is pregnant with their second child when she discovers Mark’s infidelity. This novel is about her reaction to that discovery and the […]

“Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything.”

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

I Remember Nothing & Other Reflections by Nora Ephron

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Reading makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss. […]

I have to begin with a few words about androgeny.

Crazy Salad by Nora Ephron

Scribble Scribble by Nora Ephron

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Crazy Salad – 3/5 Stars For me, reading this book came in three real swings. The first was marrying my reading of later essay collections to this one. There’s a lot of similarities between the essays in say I Feel Bad About My Neck to some of the essays here, especially ones like “Crazy Lady” and the ones about her college reunion. So there’s a kind of continuity. These essays tends to be funny in general, and slightly cutting but not particularly incisive. All of which […]

How Is It Almost September? Catching Up with Cannonball

Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump

Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas

Crime In Progress by Glenn Simpson & Peter Fritsch

Burglars Can't Be Choosers by Lawrence Block

The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian by Lawrence Block

The Burglar Who Like to Quote Kipling by Lawrence Block

Seinfeldia: How A Show About Nothing Changed Everything by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

I'll Have What She's Having: My Adventures in Celebrity Dieting by Rebecca Harrington

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album by Ken Caillat and Steve Stiefel

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O.K., I admit it, I have not posted any reviews this Cannonball. It’s just been a weird and for too many, sad time, hasn’t it? But I have managed to do a little reading. These may just be capsule reviews, but that’s just about all I can handle at the moment. There have been some good books and not so good books, but it’s 2020, so that’s par for the course. Looking at this list I realize that I have been drawn to books to […]

“Write everything down.”

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

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This was my first Nora Ephron book, and likely my last. [If this isn’t a good representation let me know and I’ll certainly revisit!] This is a collection written in the early 2000s, far enough past 9/11 that it’s enjoyably light and perhaps too far from the present that some of the lines are a little…dated? I don’t know. She lived in a different world than I ever have or will – fancy NYC apartments with five-digit monthly rents, East versus West Manhattan sunlight woes, door […]

Same, Nora

I remember nothing by Nora Ephron

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Nora Ephron’s later works seem to exist so that I have something to read while killing time reselling my old books to the used bookstore. They take about 45 minutes to read, are pleasant but not taxing, and amusing without a ton of investment. They’re ephemeral as a result, and I am only 80% certain that I remember the essays correctly. Like, I just read something about how useless egg white omelets are and that the correct way to make one is to add yolks […]



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