Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Bad to the Bone – but Not in a Cool George Thorogood Way, but an Infuriating One.

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

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  Ahahaha, this book pissed me off so much! I just could not believe how bad the whole Theranos debacle was. I mean, I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the subject before going in – I knew that, by and large, most of the companies claims were fraudulent. But there was still plenty of room to be surprised at how bad the damned thing actually was. Fair warning – this review is going to be a bit rant-like at points. I developed a lot of pent […]

Why would a mother do this?

To the Bridge by Nancy Rommelmann

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I don’t really know how I found this book.  I read it a couple months ago, and there have been so many books since then that I just can’t remember!  Anyway, this book is a true story, and at times it was hard to read.  Here’s a quick synopsis of what happened: In Oregon in May 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith dropped her two kids off a bridge into the river.  Her four year old son died, but her seven year old daughter lived.  Amanda was almost […]

Cause baby now we got bad blood

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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OMG this book annoyed me so much!  The writing was great, and it was so well investigated, but the characters drove me bonkers!  To think that they’re all real people makes me even madder.  I borrowed this book from my library back in the winter.  I got about fifty pages in and was just so frustrated with it that I ran out of time and didn’t get to finish before someone else placed a hold.  Then I kinda forgot about it for a while.  Once […]

Old Letters

Letters to Phil: Memories of a New York Boyhood 1848 - 1856 by Gene Shermerhorn

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In trying to find some primary source material on the 19th century history of New York, I stumbled upon Letters to Phil: Memories of a New York Boyhood 1848 – 1856. It was right in the time period I needed, so I took a shot on the old edition. Published in 1982, it’s a slim book, and not much more than the sum of it’s parts on the surface. A New York native named Gene Shermerhorn wrote a series of letters to his nephew, who was […]

The wife stuff (bingo, true story)

The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel

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As I was mentally writing my review for this book midway through it, I realized that my only complaint was that it wasn’t a The Right Stuff -length piece. At first I was thinking how if Koppel focused only on the Mercury astronaut wives, we could have learned so much more about them in greater depth, but then we would have missed the differing responses to the Apollo One tragedies in Pat White, consumed by her husband’s loss, and Martha Chaffee’s fortitude in moving on. […]

The Most Dangerous Worldview Is the Worldview of Those Who Have Not Viewed the World.

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World by Andrea Wulf

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Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was one of the last polymaths, a brilliant scientist and an awe-inspiring explorer, who travelled extensively in the Americas while collecting scientific data in every way then known to man. The books he published afterwards about his journey and his research became hugely popular and made him the greatest scientist of his time. Although his liberal worldview was not popular with many people on whom he relied to financially or politically support him and his endeavours, he was a lifelong abolitionist […]



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