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:

Autistic people are still recognizably human, yo.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

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I might sound more harsh than I intend or than is warranted, but I really am sick of the trope of neuro-atypical people not understanding our strange human ways.  I haven’t seen anything but clips of the Big Bang Theory, but the Sheldon Cooper type – wacky misunderstandings! – grates on my nerves; autistic people don’t walk around like automaton slaves to logic any more than depressed people walk around in tears all the time. This book doesn’t lean hard into the wrong lane, but […]

Knives out

Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations by Arnold Van De Laar

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I would imagine it is difficult to write a book on any topic you’re an expert in; making something you’re so well versed in accessible to the average reader while having something new to say seems like a difficult needle to thread.  Van de Laar rises to the challenge; Under the Knife skillfully discusses famous surgical cases that lead to innovations in the field along with sidebars about health – surgical instruments, describing positions medically – to get the layman up to speed. However, the […]

Fitting for my last CBR 11 post – no double cannonball this year. :(

Bounce by Matthew Syed

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Bounce was quite a bit more sports-focused than I was expecting, but it’s very much of a piece with the Freakonomics series, Malcolm Glawell, and Heath brothers books in that it’s in the “economics as science of human behavior” genre I can’t get enough of. Syed discusses the psychology of success (and naturally, failure) in an engaging and readable way, mostly in athletics, but also peripherally associated fields like chess.  There’s not much that’s a revelation here, but I’m a soft touch for this kind […]

Bad Gladwell is still Gladwell

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

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It’s like pizza, even when a Malcolm Gladwell book is bad, it’s still pretty good. You don’t need to know what it’s about to know what it’s like; Gladwell culls interesting sources to prove his thesis through anecdotal examples in an accessible and engaging way.  The hard part here is that that thesis is unclear and there’s not really enough to support his case. The idea that much of racism or prejudice is a matter of talking to others from a different frame of reference […]

Not a prince

Frog Music by Emma Donoghue

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Back to the goodwill from whence you came. I picked this up because I liked Room, the cover, and the dollar price tag. It was worth the buck I paid, and when I went to Amazon for the link and found the other reviewers gave it a 3 star average I thought “yep, that’s about right.” I feel bad picking on Donoghue for a book she obviously put a lot of thought into and researched thoroughly, but I’m kind of over historical fiction that reads […]

There’ll be peace when you are done?

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

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This might be my most subdued five star rating ever. I liked this, but it’s a whole different vibe from Carry On, and oh my dear lord did I ever love Carry On. The Simon Snow gang goes on an American Road Trip (TM) so that Penny can meet up with her suddenly terse long distance boyfriend (no points awarded for adding two and two together), and Simon is having an existential crisis after the comedown from saving the world, which impacts his relationship with […]



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