Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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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:

The human body is a disgusting miracle

Navel Gazing by Michael Ian Black

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It’s so refreshing to read a man’s take on body insecurity, because man does it feel like society acts as though it’s an exclusively female problem. Obviously the expectations for women are higher and beauty standards are unfairly applied to women more than men, but the idea that body image issues are strictly female is often twisted into describing them as vain. So, Michael Ian Black’s insecurities about his feet and his waistline are welcome, particularly as they are written in his typically humorous tone, […]

Un.Be.Lievable.

Imbeciles by Adam Cohen

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This is one of those books like The Handmaid’s Tale that you probably shouldn’t read while angry. Because DAMN, I’m just gonna lead with the horror – Buck v. Bell HASN’T BEEN STRUCK DOWN. This book follows the eugenics-led case to sterilize Carrie Bell because, in the words of presiding Supreme Court Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”  Except. Except. Except, you guys. She wasn’t. Her daughter wasn’t. Her mother wasn’t. She was inconvenient to her adoptive parents because she fell […]

Growing UP

XL by Scott Brown

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This was another read chosen for briskness while supervising the octolet at the library, and I read it in one sitting (possibly while hiding from said child while my mother watched him). I quite liked it, but I have to remember to grade young adult novels on a curve (which is not to say that they can’t rank up there with literature written for adults, but it’s not fair to expect a book written for younger readers to necessarily appeal to older ones). The beginning […]

Not really

Do You Mind If I Cancel by Gary Janetti

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I picked this up because I wanted something brisk and amusing to read that wouldn’t require undivided attention while I watched my kid at the library, and this fit the bill. It reminds me of nothing so much as I Feel Bad About My Neck, in that it’s random amusing anecdotes told in a fun manner, but I don’t know that it’s enough to sustain a book. When I flipped to the back cover and found that Janetti wrote for Will and Grace my first […]

Please don’t be prophetic

The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver

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Lionel Shriver does for the American economy in this book what she did for parenthood in We Need to Talk About Kevin, which is to say I’m going to go huddle in the corner and hope that this is far-fetched even though it’s written so matter-of-factly I know it isn’t. One of the cover blurbs puts it best: “if Jodi Picoult has her finger on the zeitgeist, Shriver has her hands around its throat.” Shriver is one of the authors that gets an automatic add […]

It’s a sad and beautiful world

No Happy Endings by Nora McInerney

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In this book the author specifically mentions that she internalizes bad reviews and remembers one specific amazon reviewer giving her book three stars but gave an ice scraper five. I hope she won’t take my four stars as an insult, they’re certainly not intended as one. I’ve had It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying is Okay Too), McInerney’s book about losing her husband, her father, and her pregnancy all in the same year, in my Amazon cart for approximately ever, so of course I’d read the […]



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