Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About faintingviolet

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A reader and caffeine addict who consumes all sorts of books, some just more frequently than others. Your CBR Book Club Maven with over a decade of Cannonballing experience I believe in the beauty that comes from a common goal of reading, reviewing, and discussing. Also, Fuck Cancer. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: faintingviolet's Quick Questions interview.)

faintingviolet's Reviews:

Art Crime Makes a Reappearance

Stealing the Show: A History of Art and Crime in Six Thefts by John Barelli

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May is Preservation Month, and in honor of that there is a push in the museum community to work on safety and preservation policies and procedures that all too often get pushed to the bottom of the to do list. Disaster and emergency preparedness are parts of my job that I enjoy and this year’s May focus for me was theft reporting procedures, which made Stealing the Show timely reading. But I wanted the book that this one’s subtitle describes and this isn’t it. (I’m […]

“It’s all a decision. You just decide, and then you do something. You don’t have to know everything, but you do have to begin.”

Managing Expectations: a Memoir in Essays by Minnie Driver

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Unbeknownst to me, I’ve been following along with Minnie Driver’s acting career in real time since her debut in Circle of Friends. Several of her performances have stood out to me over the years and as I have a fondness for memoirs, picking hers up seemed inevitable and going the author read audio route all the better. For almost a week Driver’s voice accompanied me on my various drives (and notably in and out of Philly for work in a day) and it was truly […]

“If you know where to look for it and how to look at it, life is marvelous.”

Seward Johnson: A Life in Public Art by Seward Johnson, Barry Raine

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I’m in a reading slump. I have great books at home staring at me, waiting for me to be in the mood for them and so far, nothing – for weeks now. I’ve been marathoning my way through procedurals on various streaming services instead. But, a work project meant that I *had* to read a book so I’m hoping that getting it done and reviewed will help get me out of this slump. My organization is hosting 10 works by sculptor Seward Johnson this summer/fall […]

“her wounds came from the same source as her power”

The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich

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Poetry is a genre that I have a terrible time reviewing but in my personal quest to keep reading the genre – and not give up on it – I find myself trying to about once a year. The Dream of a Common Language is the first one of 2023 for me (I have at least one other poetry collection on my TBR for the year) and while I’ve known about its existence since I read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild back in 2012, it took a […]

“It’s a strange state of vacillating between having our shit together and feeling less and less like we give a damn about what the rest of the world thinks.”

Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis by Ada Calhoun

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Why We Can’t Sleep is a book about Gen X Women and how mid-life is affecting them. Why then, am I a Millennial lady reading it? Because as someone who just turned 40 I often find that I identify more with things that are defined as Gen X as opposed to Millennial (the accepted year bracket for Gen X is 1964-1980, but there are models that have put it as late as 1984). I’m like many other millions of people existing on the boundaries of […]

“Art thieves steal more than beautiful objects; they steal memories and identities. They steal history.”

Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert Wittman, John Shiffman

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Sometimes professional curiosity places books on my to read list, and that’s certainly how Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures ended up there. While I don’t work in an art museum something that remains a point of interest for me from my days in grad school is the world of stolen and looted art and its recovery. Historical objects can fall into this category easily (and represent a good portion of the cases covered in Priceless) but art and antiquities […]



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