Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About octothorp

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I buy books faster than I can read them. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: octothorp's Quick Questions interview.)

octothorp's Reviews:

A slightly imperfect suit

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

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You always know when a comparison is accurate when it’s not entirely flattering. I identify strongly with Frank Lloyd Wright – obviously I am no architect, but I surround myself with artists and love the marriage of form and function. I also have an issue with balancing this with the cost of such luxuries. “I don’t buy junk. When I buy something, it’s got to be perfection or I don’t want it. You won’t find me coming home with five cheap suits, one for each […]

No Olives, Please

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

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I have a friend who dislikes mushrooms and tries them again annually just to see if her taste buds have changed. I find her dislike intriguing in part because I love mushrooms and often wonder if the dissonance is due to qualia and my “mushroom” tastes different to her “mushroom” or if what I taste is identical to what she does and she doesn’t enjoy the flavor I love. My feelings about olives is similar if less intense; I don’t hate olives, but I would […]

See, what we have here is a failure to communicate

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face? by Alan Alda

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I love that Alan Alda has settled nicely into his role as America’s Grandpa. This book is filled with that down-to-earth wisdom, here on the subject of communication itself. The book is surprisingly fact and science dense (or perhaps not, for those who are familiar with his “Flame Challenge,” the contest he started to explain basic science in a way that 11 year olds could understand, judged by those same 11 year olds) but conversational and accessible. Which, again, might be expected of a book […]

Are we having fun yet

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

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Discomfort should be examined, and I find books where well-meaning people go too far in “helping” incredibly uncomfortable, I’m sure due to my anxiety and desire to help wherever possible. I would sincerely hope that I’m not Alix, the white woman employing our protagonist Emira as a nanny to her child, and would never presume that I know better than another adult what is best for her, or Kelley, the boyfriend who does the same from another angle. But this book was uncomfortable to read […]

The heat is on

From Scratch by Allen Salkin

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I have watched Food Network more or less from its inception, when my cousin called me and told me “you need to watch this show, this guy is about to set himself on fire.”  Emeril Lagasse never did, in fact, combust, to my eternal shock (go back and watch some of the older episodes before Emeril became Emeril (TM), it’s astonishing how close the man lets his chef’s whites get to an open flame, and that’s coming from someone with enough burns to look like […]

There is a fire that never goes out

Little Fires Everywhere by Celest Ng

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I was totally blown away by this book, and I was not expecting to be. I kept expecting the plot to be twisty, in a way that would have undermined the story, but it was surprisingly free of manufactured drama. That’s not to say that the story unfolds in a completely predictable or straightforward way, but it was refreshing to read a book where the plot isn’t propelled by people being too credulous or stacking coincidences. We open on an upper middle class home as […]



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