Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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This is going to be a careful balancing act of a review (and it’s almost definitely going to fail)

Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad

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Going into this book, I wasn’t sure what I was going to get from it. I am a white, middle-class, cis, hetero man from the global North and I’ve definitely f**ked up not recognizing the privilege that one or many of those things has given. I’ll also f**k up again (guaranteed) but hopefully I’ll keep learning. Think about the role my ethnicity has played in my life is something I tend to face most days, and for the last decade or so I’ve reflected a […]

I’ve got a few reviews I need to write, but Jon Ronson ruined my plans

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson

The Debutante: From High Society to White Supremacy by Jon Ronson

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I’m sitting on….three other reviews at the moment. But over the course of three or four days, I listened to these audio books, and everything else has been put on hold. I came to these books through a bit of a circuitous route. Jon Ronson was interviewed on the podcast Knowledge Fight, a podcast that critically explores the world of Alex Jones. Ronson has long written about both white supremacy and conspiracy theories, and Alex Jones is firmly planted at the nexus of those two […]

The Re-Birth of a Nation (and what came after…)

Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois

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I had been meaning to tackle this legendary W.E.B. Du Bois’ tome for years, finally deciding to do it this month. It wasn’t what I expected, in many ways. Those expectations came with my own ignorance in not knowing a lot of Du Bois’ work. I’d read little of him before getting to this. I knew that despite his status amongst the Black intellectuals and historians of his time, he was outcast near the end of his life for leaving the NAACP because of his […]

Bondage

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness by Michelle Alexander

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I feel like I’m the last person in my circle to have not read Michelle Alexander’s landmark work The New Jim Crow. It’s one of those books I’d always meant to get to but never had the chance. I borrowed it from someone in my family over a year ago and since I’m going to see them this weekend, I figured there’s no better excuse than that to finally read it. I’ve heard a lot of arguments adjacent to it in favor of ending the drug war […]

This one was a win for me!

When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole

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This was a little funky in places, a little shaky on its feet, but overall I really enjoyed reading it. This is billed as a thriller, but it also has elements of romance, horror, and mystery in it. I was super stoked when I heard Alyssa Cole was trying her hand at another genre (she normally writes romance, both historical and contemporary). I’ve been hit or miss with her books, particularly her contemporary stuff, so I was really curious to see what she could do […]

A Supremacy of Dunces

The Last Widow by Karin Slaughter

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Here’s my problem with The Last Widow: I wish I could say it was implausible and over the top, and ten years ago it would have been, but unfortunately, it’s not, and that makes it a scary and gripping read, but not a particularly comforting one. There’s nothing in this book that hasn’t happened before, and it’s going to happen again, sooner rather than later. We all know it. Karin Slaughter certainly does; there is a bleak and cynical current that flows through this book; […]



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