Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


We All Deserve to Be Happy

Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You by Sophie Hagen

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I found the incredibly funny Sophie Hagen through her podcasts, Made of Human and Secret Dinosaur Cult. She is a lovely Danish standup comedian that now lives in London and she is very, very funny. She is also fat, and has been for most of her life. As most of us who are on the heavier side probably know, this means she has had certain experiences in life that are less than ideal. She decided it was time to really look into the ideas that […]

Surgery Before Anesthesia and Antiseptics

The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris

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Bingo 17 (Science!) The Butchering Art is part biography and part history of medicine, but mostly medicine. Do not read this is you are squeamish about some fairly graphic descriptions of surgery before things like antiseptics and anesthesia. The focus of the book is one the career of a Quaker named Joseph Lister in Victorian England; if his last name sounds vaguely familiar it should, and I’m surprised it doesn’t get more attention or pointed out sooner than it actually does. I’m also slightly ashamed […]

You can die from constipation. Just ask Elvis Presley’s doctor.

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

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CBR11bingo: Science If you do a Google search for “how did Elvis Presley die,” most answers will mention prescription drugs and cardiac arrest. Until I read Gulp, I hadn’t heard that the King had what’s known as a megacolon, which is exactly what it sounds like: a big-ass large intestine. According to his personal physician George Nichopoulos, the condition gave Elvis such terrible constipation that Nichopoulous had to administer laxatives and enemas on an almost daily basis. Whether the condition was the result of genetics […]

A long apprenticeship for this final act of bad judgment

Orfeo by Richard Powers

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CBR BINGO: Awards (2014 California Book Awards Silver Medal Fiction/ Man Booker long list) Somehow I managed not to get the memo regarding Richard Powers earlier in his career. I picked up “Overstory” last year because it was displayed at the library, had trees on the cover and looked like it checked all of my eco-fiction boxes. (I’m still wondering what to call the nature/environmental/ecology centric fiction that I love. Is there an established understood category for this? Anyone?) Didn’t realize I was picking up the […]

DNA and Genes Broken Down

The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean

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Bingo Square: Science! I quite enjoyed Same Kean’s previous book, The Disappearing Spoon, so I am not entirely sure why it took me so long to get around to reading this – The Violinist’s Thumb was published in summer 2012 and I have a hardcover, so I’ve obviously had it for a while.  I will say, at least part of the blame goes to the fact that around 2014/2015 I transitioned to primarily reading Kindle books so it hasn’t helped diminish the stack of physical […]

The Raft of Medusa

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

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Read as part of CBR 11: Science David Wallace-Wells wants us to avoid the trap of fatalism when it comes to climate change. Fatalism is a form of denialism. I get that. I appreciate it. But man, it’s tough to come away from reading this book feeling anything but pessimistic about the future at best and nihilistic at worse. This book is divided into two sections: the potential scientific effects in the near future due to global warming, and how we process that ethically, politically, […]



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