Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About esmemoria

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Eager to get back on the horse this year! In my walking around life, I miss my old, blind pug (the Ancient Mariner), help amazing college students become teachers, and tie an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: esmemoria's Quick Questions interview.)

esmemoria's Reviews:

A Giant of Scientific Thought and Deep Humanity

The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

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Bingo: TBR. This has been on my TBR for ages. [T]he history of science–by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans–teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us.” In the midst of these terrible times, one of my greatest despairs is the damage being done to scientific research. In an effort to soothe myself, I […]

Confronting the Past

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

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Bingo: Diaspora. This book about American slavery ties to the African diaspora that occurred due to the transatlantic slave trade. The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. The history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories.” Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History […]

A Mediocre Procedural

Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

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Bingo: Border. Story deals with the borders between good and evil, life and death, rage and reason. Patricia Cornwell’s Postmortem is the first in her Kay Scarpetta series. Scarpetta is chief medical examiner and she is plunged into a case where four women have been assaulted and strangled. The book is a standard procedural about a serial killer with relatively poor characterization. Scarpetta is not a compelling protagonist; she is somewhat stiff and colorless. Her colleagues in law enforcement are typical types—sexist gruff police officer, […]

Question of Logistics

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Bingo: “N” **SPOILERS, Don’t proceed if you don’t want to learn the “twist.”         Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is an odd book. It tells the story of Kathy, the protagonist, and her two friends, Ruth and Tommy, whom she lives with in a residential school called Hailsham. Hailsham is a place for students like them to grow up, be educated, and put their hearts into artwork, poetry, and other activities. These students are not your typical learners, however. They are […]

Couldn’t Tell You What I Just Read

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

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Bingo: White The Buddhists say that wisdom may be attained by reaching the three marks. The first is an understanding of the absence of self. The second is an understanding of the impermanence of all things. The third is an understanding of the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary experience.” It took me 90 minutes to read Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation and I can only give the briefest of synopses: it is a story about a marriage that comes together then falls apart due to an […]

“She believed that all people unless impeded wanted family, needed family, that family was what life was for”

Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin

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Bingo: Family. The entire book revolves around the protagonist’s families and her place in them. Polly is happily married to her husband Henry and a content mother. Her own family is patrician and oppressive, a very tight unit that has enfolded Polly her whole life. In both of her families Polly is reliable, uncomplaining, giving, and steady. Which makes it all the more surprising when she finds herself in a passionate love affair with an artist named Lincoln. The intense love between Polly and Lincoln […]



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