Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A Gut-Churning Good Time

The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman

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What a ride! Big thanks to badkittyuno for putting this gem on my radar. Or, in the parlance of this book, allowing me to seek of the poisons of this tome via unicorn horn. We, as humans, have done some pretty vile things to ourselves and others since…pretty much the dawn of time. The Royal Art of Poison illustrates-in graphic detail- the poisonous things that people (mostly royalty, but the common man is capable of critical nastiness as well) have been doing intentionally and accidentally to […]

What’s old is new again.

Michaelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling by Ross King

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I spent a large portion of my teenage life aspiring to be an artist, and I surrounded myself with art books. Hell, my screen name (which I’ve used since the mid-90s) comes from a French Neoclassical artist. For all that, however, I mostly only read the books for the pictures – not the text. So while I’ve memorized every line in some of Ingres’ sketches, or Michelangelo’s sculptures, I can give only quick outlines of Leonardo, or Michaelangelo, or Delacroix, or any number of other […]

In which I am outraged by a book’s audacity to be poorly written, edited, and titled

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King

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This book made me unreasonably angry, so here I am, entering the world of the Cannonball Read as an outraged reader. I really wanted to love this book, because it’s about something about which I know nothing. But I wasn’t able to learn much. The narrative is completely scattered, and there are an astonishing number of tangents that are distracting and irritating. I mean, total non-sequitors. An example, “The story [of a prank pulled by Filippo Brunelleschi], known as “The Tale of the Fat Carpenter,” […]



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