Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


People Who Made a Difference” Or “People Who Tried”

Joey: The Story of Joe Biden by Jill Biden and Kathleen Krull

Dr. Fauci: How a Boy from Brooklyn Because America's Doctor by Kate Messner

King Of Ragtime: The Story of Scott Joplin by Stephen Costanza

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I do not care what you think about Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, or Scott Joplin (he fits my theme, if not a smidgen loosely, which is “People Who Made a Difference” Or “People Who Tried”), but these books are really cool. Okay, not “cool” as in The Fonz was cool or a snowman is cool, but in the way that a good book can be cool. Each of the below titles (though all are available, I read via online reader copies) talks about how […]

Just Walk Forward

Last Flight by Kristen Mai Giang

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From Publisher Description of Last Flight by Kristen Mai Giang: On April 24, 1975 the last flight out of Saigon, Vietnam carried over 400 people to the United States, six days before Saigon’s surrender to the North Vietnamese Army.  I was a few months old in April, therefore, I obviously have no memory of this happening. However, when I learned that the war was still basically going and I was alive for it, it was an eye opener. I had always heard about the Vietnam […]

Colonialism Lives!

The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy by Philippe Sands

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CBR 15 Bingo – Africa: This book is about the Chagos Archipelago, which is a part of Mauritius, as well as the aftereffects of colonial legacy in Africa more generally. In the 1960s, Britain created its last colony when it detached the Chagos Islands from the fledgling nation of Mauritius, forcibly deporting the residents whose families have lived there for centuries. Philippe Sands, who was one of the lawyers representing Mauritius at the World Court, tells the story of how this came to be, and the […]

Getting in my review of Class Act

Class Act by Jerry Craft

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Class Act reminded me of The Hate U Give, in that we have a protagonist who is attending a school with predominantly white, privileged classmates. Our main characters are Drew and Jordan (Jordan was the focus on Craft’s previous book in this universe, New Kid) as they deal with being scholarship student eighth graders at Riverdale Academy.   But what’s this story about, you ask? From Goodreads: “Eighth grader Drew Ellis is no stranger to the saying “You have to work twice as hard to […]

CBR15 Bingo: Politics

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

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4.5 stars CBR15 Bingo: Politics (the word is used 18 times over the course of the novel) Official book description: It isn’t much of an island that rises up one moonless night from the depths of the Circle Sea — just a few square miles of silt and some old ruins. Unfortunately, the historically disputed lump of land called Leshp is once again floating directly between Ankh-Morpork and the city of Al-Khali on the coast of Klatch — which is spark enough to ignite that […]

50 Years of Feminism

50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution by Katherine Spillar, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem

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Seminal articles, pieces of fiction, and letters to the editor compiled from fifty years’ worth of Ms. magazine provide us with a glimpse into the last half-century of the feminist movement. For someone living in the 21st century, I have a hefty digital collection of midcentury magazines. I find it fascinating to immerse myself in the minutiae of such a different period, seeing how the world was expected to look at the time. I even like reading the advertisements! I haven’t read any old editions of […]



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