Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Reflecting on the road to progress

So Many Stars by Caro De Robertis

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Bingo Square: Right (the right to exist, the right to be oneself, Civil Rights) This was this fall session’s non-fiction selection for queer book club, and we all quite enjoyed it. Of course, it was also one of those books where we ran out of things to say because it can be hard to talk critically about people’s experiences. The book was part of a larger oral history project and the author focused specifically on elder people of color in the queer community. While their […]

“Oh Lord, give us the strength to survive the weariness of our lives.”

Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich

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I love oral histories. I’ll read them on any subject, even one I have no interest in. There’s just something about them that fascinates me. I love to hear all the different perspectives on the same topic. I’ve read sad oral histories before, but I’ve never read anything like Voices from Chernobyl. Voice from Chernobyl is hands down the saddest book I’ve ever read. “Sad” isn’t even the word. The grief flies right off the page and envelops you. It’s also incredibly moving and downright poetic. […]

To Take Pride

The Stonewall Reader by ed. The New York Public Library

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Read as part of CBR16 Bingo: Pride. The book is a collection of oral histories on the LGBTQIA+ Movement before, during and after the Stonewall Uprising.  This is the book I’ve been looking for. The history of equity, freedom, liberation for LGBTQIA+ persons in this country is long but not well-recorded. The reason is obvious: many, most, really all of these human beings was considered morally corrupt at best and illegal at worst. It’s only in the last 15-20 years as straight, cis people start […]

A Niche Interest, But it’s MY Interest

Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan

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Aw hell yes! I love a good oral history. And I especially love a good oral history about a subject based on popular culture, as pop culture inherently generates a lot of fodder for the telling. And as many people here are probably  aware, I adore a great action film. Mad Max: Fury Road has been one of my favourites from the last decade or so. It is not often that we see a sequel—let alone a long belated one!—see so much critical acclaim. But […]

If you’re not failing, you’re not f*cking doing the job properly. – Tom Hardy

Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan

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Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan does what it says on the tin. This oral history of the years and years it took to make Mad Max: Fury Road is interesting, comprehensive, and a great read for fans of Mad Max, and movie making in general. I knew that it had taken George Miller a very long time to get Mad Max: Fury Road made, and I knew that the movie had been storyboarded […]

A Slice of Fried Gold Movie History

You've Got Red on You: How Shaun of the Dead Was Brought to Life by Clark Collis

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You’ve Got Red on You details the story of how 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, a low-budget British movie about Londoners battling zombies in a pub, became a horror-comedy whose fan base only continues to grow and with each passing year cements its place in pop culture history. I became aware of this book when its author, Clark Collis, guested on the Screen Drafts podcast for their episode on Zombie movies and I’m ever so glad I did. Collis takes the work he did on his […]



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