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:

Art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something

Flight by Sherman Alexie

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I’m pretty sure someone on the Pajiba Facebook group just asked what movie/book/show were you glad you watched but never need to see again? I think Flight may just be that book for me, and I just read it a second time. I think I buried some of the most horrific parts in the memory hole, because re-reading it I had the thought multiple times “oh, so that’s where I read that.” That’s not to say this is a bad book. It’s very good. Requiem […]

It’s like bad pizza…

The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks

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…Even when Oliver Sacks is bad, he’s still not that bad.  And this isn’t bad, it’s just my least favorite of his books. As Sacks himself allows, this is more like two books sandwiched together, and they both suffer for length. I may be biased as I work for a pediatric ophthalmologist, but I was really excited for the first half, with the titular island where a disproportionate percentage of residents have achromatopsia, or complete colorblindness, along with the associated low vision, photophobia, and nystagmus. […]

Aww Shucks

Shucked by Erin Byers Murray

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This is probably the sort of book I’d have appreciated more sitting by the ocean, laying in the sun without much to do, just before a seafood cookout to appreciate the setting.  It was good enough, but I hate to say that I’m not sure what about the author’s experience here necessitated a book. She spends two summers (I think? Maybe more) on an oyster farm that ships to restaurant luminaries like Thomas Keller (and foodie that I am, her dinner at Alinea might have […]

I got suckered, don’t get suckered

Big white ghetto by Kevin D. Williamson

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This was my fault. I got excited on Black Friday and bought all the books that looked interesting. I saw this book and the synopsis and was thinking that this might be an exploration of poor white America from a journalistic perspective. Something like Evicted but with a focus on how poverty perpetuates racial divides, how poor white Americans separate themselves from poor black and latinx Americans by convincing themselves that they’re temporarily disenfranchised but the other poor people have done something wrong. I got […]

Thank you, I know what fads are.

Flavor of the Month by Joel Best

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The subtitle of this book is “why smart people fall for fads.” That is the book I wanted to read. I got a chapter at the end of this book devoted to it. The majority of the text was defining what a fad is. There were interesting things to be said about fads without explaining what specifically makes people prone to them – I for one was amused by the first chapter’s survey results from the past about what the top ten fads were at […]

All hits, no misses

Hits and Misses by Simon Rich

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I love Simon Rich so much, I’m honestly wondering what he could write that I’d give a bad review to. I first was introduced to his writing with a reading on NPR of “Unprotected,” a short story written from the perspective of a neglected condom in a man’s wallet, which was 10000% funnier than it had a right to be. I then went out and bought every book I could find with his name on it. So when I went to the bookstore to sell […]



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