Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Recipes and Stories from Canada would be enough

Taste the Wild by Lisa Nieschlag, Lars Wentrup

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Bingo 20: Landscape As the cover (pictured above) suggests, this book is about Canada (see wooded landscape in mists) in terms of food (it’s part cookbook) and character (it’s part excerpted prose bits from travel and fiction stories, and photography collection too). I can see how all of this could fit together, except that it doesn’t quite work out. The photos are gorgeous but the sentimental/philosophical sayings accompanying them are so out of context that to me at least they come off as either hollow […]

Mary Dixie Carter’s The Photographer

The Photographer by Mary Dixie Carter

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Another scary, psychological thriller with an unwell woman at the center (and a person on the cover #cbr13bingo). Delta Dawn is a photographer in New York City, and she spends most of her time taking photos of children’s birthday parties having discovered her knack for making children look happy and healthy and like their parents’ dreams.  She routinely photoshops images that are less than perfect to fulfill the fantasy these wealthy families pay her to portray. When she meets the Straub family, Delta feels she […]

What Happens When Industries and Tastes Change

Abandoned London by Katie Wignall

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CBR13 Bingo: Machinery: So many of the abandoned buildings once housed great bits of industry — including a giant flour mill and sewage treatment plants. Best for: Anyone looking for an interesting if somewhat bleak coffee table photography book. In a nutshell: Author Wignall captures some of the haunting images of buildings abandoned throughout this giant city. Worth quoting: “The land was bought by Lendlease property developers in 2010 and the estate was demolished between 2011 and 2014. There were 284 ‘affordable homes’ (priced between […]

One Woman Holds a Torch for the Three Women Who Kicked Down the Door to War

You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War by Elizabeth Becker

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My master’s adviser at the University of Washington had rejected my thesis on the Bangladesh War of Independence after I refused to sleep with him. He said the one was not related to the other but would welcome having an affair if I changed my mind. That infuriating fact  introduces us to Elizabeth Becker. Becker is no stranger to reporting; she has covered revolution, war, and genocide all over the world. She has won many prizes for her work, including (but not limited to the) […]

“She wondered, for the thousandth time, who got to decide one tradition was right and another was wrong.”

The Butchers' Blessing by Ruth Gilligan

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What makes a tradition a tradition? How and when do we pass from routine to ritual, and ritual to sacred rite? How do we decide what it kept, what is left behind, and what must be destroyed for the good of the future? Ruth Gilligan knows, but she will not give us any easy answers. Instead, she gives us snapshots; a literal photograph  sets us in motion, but glimpses into the life of “modern Ireland” connect the pieces by stringing one red knot to another. […]

London Calling

Hard Light by Elizabeth Hand

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With a new Cass Neary novel out, I realized that I put book three off for so long. That was a mistake. I’ve never enjoyed a misanthropic character more and I think in large part that’s because Elizabeth Hand is such a fantastic writer. She doesn’t make Neary more than it is, she’s an anti-hero plain and simple. But she knows how to write a hell of an atmospheric tale, with touches and nods to photography and the punk scene. I know little about either […]



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