Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About GentleRain

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Your jack of all trades eccentric. Knows a little about a lot and a lot about a little. Tends to mainly read non-fiction (history, true crime, old gossip, etc), SF/F, horror, graphic novels, "genre" books. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: GentleRain's Quick Questions interview.)

GentleRain's Reviews:

“That’s the last time I ever saw her:” Judy Garland in Decline

The Other Side of the Rainbow: With Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol by Mel Tormé

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CBR14Bingo: Cold (the wintery chill of the sight of a full staff of people leaving a woman to slowly kill herself) While it was interesting reading about the behind the scenes of the ill-fated Judy Garland Show, this is a very sad book and it’s a grim look into the waste that can occur on the heels of abuse with no help afterwards. I think what struck me the most reading this is that Tormé never has the thought t0 get Judy some help — […]

“Me! But nobody likes me best!”

A Vicarage Family by Noel Streatfeid

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CBR14Bingo: Holiday (lots of holidays in this book) Another clearly beloved British children’s classic that I missed as a kid. A Vicarage Family is about (shockingly) a vicar’s family. More specifically it follows Vicky, the stand-in for Streatfeild, as she grows up during the Edwardian era. Isobel is artistic, Louise is pretty, Dick is the baby, and their cousin John is smart, but Vicky is always getting in trouble and doesn’t excel at anything. Her own strong sense of being wronged lead to her constantly […]

“I, Penelope Taberner Cameron, tell this story of happenings when I was a young girl.”

A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley

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CBRBingo14: Time (time traveling) I think this is one of those books that is a children’s classic in England but didn’t become as famous in the US, or else I just missed it as a kid. I picked it up on vacation in England recently along with two other children’s time travel novels, which seems to be a lively genre over there. A Traveller in Time is a book that’s very centered in one place, in this case the farm of Thackers. Uttley is wonderful […]

A Well Written Family Memoir That Didn’t Click For Me

She Left Me the Gun: My Mother's Life Before Me by Emma Brockers

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CBRBingo14: Shadow (the family history is a shadow over the writer’s life) Sometimes you read a very well reviewed, technically well written, and well researched book and find the narrator annoying, and that’s what happened here for me. She Left Me the Gun is a memoir about Brockes researching her mother’s life after her death from cancer. Through her research, she finds out the truth about her grandfather’s abuse of his children, and she connects with her family in South Africa. This book is very […]

“Buddy Rich once told me that he was the loneliest man in the universe.”

The Torment of Buddy Rich: A Biography by John Minahan

Traps, The Drum Wonder: The Life of Buddy Rich by Mel Torme

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CBR14Bingo: Minds (I read both of these as I continued my personal psychological study of Buddy Rich’s mind) Buddy Rich is arguably the best drummer to ever live. I was first introduced to his work about a year ago when he was mentioned in a biography of Frank Sinatra I was reading; the two of them had at least one fistfight when they were in Tommy Dorsey’s band together. As I have a fascination with mid-century men with terrible tempers (Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster) I […]

The warmth and joy of childhood, perfectly captured in manga form

Yotsuba&! (Vols 1-15) by Kiyihiko Azuma

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CBR14Bingo: Heart (this manga is full of heart and warm feelings) I honestly find it easier to write negative reviews than positive ones, because when I love a book intensely it’s hard to come up with something beyond “I love this! Read it!” But I will do my best to get across why you should spend some time in the world of Yotsuba&!. This series follows an extremely energetic 5-year old, the titular Yotsuba, and her adventures. In the first volume, she and her dad move […]



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