Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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badkittyuno's Reviews:

I bet Lydia Kang is a lot of fun at parties

A Beautiful Poison by Lydia Kang

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Lydia Kang wrote one of my favorite recent reads, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything. So when a novel by her popped up in my Overdrive recommendations after I finished a nonfiction book on the Spanish flu, I immediately borrowed it. This woman knows a LOT about poisons, murders, and the Gilded Age. Also, she looks like this: And I totally want to be her friend. Anyway, A Beautiful Poison is set in new York during the Spanish flu, but […]

“My adoption was hard, and complicated, but it was not a tragedy”

All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir by Nicole Chung

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Nicole Chung was born to Korean parents, extremely premature, and adopted by a white couple in Oregon. Her adoption was never kept a secret — instead, it was presented to her all her life as the amazing miracle that came out of the terrible tragedy of her parents giving her up. You can see how that would affect a person. “To be a hero, I thought, you had to be beautiful and adored. To be beautiful and adored, you had to be white. That there […]

“The best estimate of flu deaths in 1918–1919 is between 50 million and 100 million worldwide”

Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 by Albert Marrin

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Albert Marrin has apparently written quite a few history books, mostly on American wars. But I placed a hold on works about mankind’s relationship with rats and another about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire after finishing this interesting book about the 1918 Spanish Flu. The man definitely has some varied interests. “In the United States, influenza death rates were so high that the average life span fell by twelve years, from fifty-one in 1917 to thirty-nine in 1918. If you were a “doughboy”—slang for an American […]

In search of a map — and an identity

Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

Daughter of the Siren Queen by Tricia Levenseller

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I’m going to review these two together, since I read them back to back. It’s hard to talk about the 2nd one too much without giving away spoilers, but I’ll do my best! “Even a man who’s spent his whole life at sea has reason to fear her when she’s angry. But not I. I sleep soundly. Listening to her music. The sea watches over me. She protects her own.” Alosa has been raised by the king of pirates — a fearsome man who rules […]

Pure junk food but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun

The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll

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This book, about five women on a reality tv show called Goal Diggers, is the novel equivalent of exactly that: trashy reality tv that you cannot stop watching. “The patriarchy survives so long as women are pitted against one another. It is a threat to a man’s way of life when women gather, when they question the status quo, and when they inevitably start to resist it.” The premise is good: a reality show about extremely successful women, two of whom happen to be sisters. […]

“At this point, I think if you’re being silent, you’re making a choice and taking a side.”

Things That Make White People Uncomfortable by Michael Bennett

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“At this point, I think if you’re being silent, you’re making a choice and taking a side.” Shit. That will make ANYONE feel uncomfortable. Which is exactly Bennett’s goal and he achieves it here. Michael Bennett plays in the NFL, along with his brother Marcellus (who even I’ve heard of and I know nothing about football). He’s a Super Bowl champion and has won awards for his playing. He’s also incredibly intelligent and passionate, and those traits, so much more than anything that might make […]



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