Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Crimes Against Our Own Humanity

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven R. Scott

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I’ve spent a career at the margins of politics, learning a lot about how people interact and how the most insignificant seeming interaction can have massive ripple effects and how political discourse flows in certain directions, mainly towards fear. It’s a world of real-politik which can best described with the world-weary quote from Men in Black, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals.” Nowhere is this more evident than in George Takei (Yes, Sulu from Star Trek)’s graphic novel rendition of his […]

Exciting historical fiction for the kids

The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin

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The Bletchley Riddle, a novel for readers age 10-14, was co-written by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin. The two authors take turns writing chapters from the points of view of 14-year-old Lizzie (Sepetys) and her 19-year-old brother Jakob (Sheinkin). It’s a fast-paced, thrilling and educational mystery/spy novel set in the early days of WWII at Great Britain’s top secret location for code breaking — Bletchley Park. Sepetys and Sheinkin include tons of fascinating historical facts and real historical figures in their story. When the story […]

“He had been defying us all. Yet there was nobody in the court who did not look superior to him.”

Radio Treason: The Trials of Lord Haw-Haw, The British Voice of Nazi Germany by Rebecca West

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Radio Treason was originally a series of New Yorker dispatches from Rebecca West, covering the trial for treason of William Joyce, who was a radio propagandist for the Nazis nicknamed “Lord Haw-Haw.” This book is a reissue of these columns into one book, which is unfortunately and depressingly extremely of the moment. I had a lot of moments of recognition and sadness reading this as to how little things have changed in terms of the small minded and pathetic nature of Fascists. West details the trial and […]

“The ultimate effect of unceasing propaganda has now been to cancel out the effect of all news alike.”

A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940 by Iris Origo

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Another random bookstore find, as so many good books in my life are. It’s why I trawl through my favorite sections! A Chill in the Air: An Italian War Diary, 1939-1940 is what the title conveys. Iris Origo was an American born woman married to an Italian man (although she spent most of her life in Italy from childhood) and this is her diary of 1939-1940 as Italy slowly descends into war. Origo was a woman from a highly privileged background — her godfather was the […]

“The past is the future”

Obasan by Joy Kogawa

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Cbr17bingo citizen Over the years, I have read a number of books that have dealt with the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy and Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine were all written from personal, family experiences of that shameful chapter in US history that was left out of history books when I was in school (and is probably being removed from them now). I had never heard of Joy […]

“Did I ever imagine how things were going to turn out? No, thank God. Why thank God? Had it been that bad? No, of course not. Only quite, quite different. Just as well one didn’t know in advance.”

Change Lobsters and Dance by Lilli Palmer

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I had no recollection of why I purchased this book until about halfway through when David (Edward VIII) and Wallis showed up. Then I realized this must have been cited in some biography I read about him, Wallis, or Jimmy Donahue (as Jimmy is also in this book, and I remember the disastrous dinner party described here, where he jumps off the yacht twice and humilates them in front of Greta Garbo). But putting that whole grim group aside, this was a lovely surprise to […]



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