Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


The King who brought back partying

A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration by Jenny Uglow

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Charles II is an interesting figure to me, partly because he seems so much more human than the joyless Oliver Cromwell who’d preceded him having lopped Charles’ dad’s head off (also interesting to me, as despite my reading habits I’m actually anti-monarchy) but mostly influenced by the fact that before reading this, pretty much everything I knew about him was gleaned from Horrible Histories (and this song in particular – to be fair, they do a pretty decent job of covering the highlights). Thanks to […]

“They began their lives in deficit. Not only were most of them born into working-class families, but they were born female. Before they had even spoken their first words they were regarded as less important than their brothers and more of a burden in the world than their wealthier female counterparts. Their worth was compromised before they had even attempted to prove it.”

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

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People have been fascinated by Jack the Ripper for over a century now, and we’ve long come to accept as fact certain things about the case – more specifically, we all think of his victim type as sex workers. Historian Hallie Rubenhold is here to change that with this incredible book that delves into the lives of Polly Walker, Annie Chapman, Lizzie Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly, letting us know who they really were while also giving us a window into what Victorian […]

With great power comes great responsibility

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

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Colour me surprised to find out that what I thought was Uncle Ben’s quote was actually much older than that, hailing instead from the pen of journalist Camille Desmoulins during the French Revolution. While reading this and following the fates of Camille, lawyer Georges Danton and politician Maximilien Robespierre, I couldn’t help but be reminded over and over of another superhero quote, this time from Batman – “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” None of the […]

Doesn’t live up to the title’s promise

The Worst Street in London by Fiona Rule

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The Worst Street in London promises to delve into the history of Dorset Street, once a street full of fairly well-to-do weavers making the most of their flourishing trade, that sank into disrepute as the work dried up and the weavers moved away. Apparently becoming the most notorious street in the whole of the city and one haunted by thieves, pimps, prostitutes and murderers, on reading this it turned out it was mostly populated by the desperately poor who were busy being fleeced by unscrupulous […]

Take my wife….go on, take her.

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I first heard about Thy Neighbor’s Wife when watching Netflix’s Voyeur, a documentary about author Gay Talese and a man who’d bought a motel solely so he could peep on the activities of those renting rooms. I found Voyeur fascinating, and so when I came across this on offer, I thought I’d give it a go. Thy Neighbor’s Wife is a big, fat book, delving into the sexual mores of the American public, and the efforts of lawmakers to govern these, from the mid-twentieth century […]

Don’t wanna be shamed? Maybe just don’t be a dick…

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Once forming a big part of punishments, particularly before the 19th century, public shaming has come back with a bang since the rise of social media. In So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, journalist Jon Ronson takes a look at some of the people who have become famous for being publicly shamed – people like Justine Sacco, the African Aids tweet woman; Lindsay Stone, who took a photo of herself flipping off a sign at Arlington Cemetery; and various men who’ve been caught in sex scandals […]



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