Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Probably the only time a VT girl will give NY this much lovin’

Only in New York (50 States) by Heather Alexander

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From Manhattan to Hudson Bay (and every place before, between and after), from hockey to baseball history, from plants and flowers, from being the first national capital, to hosting the oldest inn in the continental US, from parks and museums and attractions, from animals and castles, Only in New York covers it all in this kids encyclopedic like book. Heather Alexander shows us that we can craft our own kazoo in the Kazoo Museum in Eden, New York. We find out the state fossil, the […]

War Without End

The Border by Don Winslow

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Someone I follow on Instagram did a “What are you reading this weekend?” post. I responded with this book. The person replied: “I’ve never read Don Winslow but I’ve heard good things.” Hmm. On the one hand, Winslow is one of my favorite, reliable writers. He churns out some incredible crime fiction, including epic historical crime fiction that integrates real events into the narrative. I’m reading what he’s writing. On the other hand, Winslow’s art is hard to separate from the artist, especially when he […]

How could anyone know he’d be Leonard Bernstein?

Music was IT: Young Leonard Bernstein by Susan Goldman Rubin

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It took me a few days to get through Music was IT: Young Leonard Bernstein not because it was a hard read but was a read that took time to get through as there was a lot going on and I needed to concentrate on it. Plus, having a cold that made me not want to read did not help. Susan Goldman Rubin created a good introduction about the man Leonard Bernstein, but it needed more as it ends on his debut in Carnegie Hall […]

Anti-Semites Get Theirs

Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in Wartime America by Michael Benson

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CBR 14 Bingo: Bodies Bodies hit the floor a whole lot of times, if not permanently. With Nazism on the rise in 1930s America, protected by free speech laws, a Jewish judge sets out to deal with them in the only way he knows how – by setting gangsters on them. I’m not big on WW2 stories, mostly because I feel like the market is rather oversaturated. But rather perversely I’m still always on the lookout for unique stories in this setting, because those stories […]

Can’t no man play like me. Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Little Rosetta and the Talking Guitar: The Musical Story of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Woman Who Invented Rock and Roll, by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow,

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Can’t no man play like me. Sister Rosetta Tharpe   I know I had heard of Sister Rosetta Tharpe before. Unfortunately, I had forgotten about her. But recently she was a performer I refound (see my Green Piano review) when this picture book by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, Little Rosetta and the Talking Guitar: The Musical Story of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Woman Who Invented Rock and Roll, came up on my radar. As well as Queer as All Get Out by Shelby Criswell (review to […]

What This Cruel War Is About

El Chapo: The Untold Story of the World's Most Infamous Drug Lord by Noah Hurowitz

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I’ve long avoided books about El Chapo, Mexican drug cartels, and other similar subjects because I think most US citizens have an outlandish view of how the drug trade actually works. In the brief encounters with Mexican drug cartels in fiction, the gangsters are portrayed as overly-tattooed, desperately violent and almost amoral. While there are, of course, shades of that in real life, it also shows a cartoonish image as an avatar for the average North American citizen’s inability to grapple with how its racist drug […]



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