Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Sidewriter

CBR12 participant

Feminist word nerd who loves lists, takes walks in the rain, and prioritizes cuddletime with my dog.rn

Sidewriter's Reviews:

The Value of Invisible Work

Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans

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I found this book really helpful for seeing patterns over time in various tech industries, and for making work that had previously been invisible to me (and admittedly also thus devalued) visible and vital. Some of the attempts at levity fall a little flat, but they were easy for me to ignore because I was busy drawing connections between the chapters. Women were pushed out of profession after profession as part of exactly the same progression of events and attitude changes, and Evans is adept […]

Let High Schoolers Read Modern Dystopia!

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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The first few chapters are exposition — a disjointed, opaque slog of a journey — but once that’s out of the way and the story picks up, it’s a quick, multi-layered read studded with expertly-placed philosophical questions. Heavy on plot and light on character development, it’s clear this novel was written around a thesis, more of a manifesto via story than the other way around, but it’s skillfully done. Little details, like Huxley’s consistent use of “pneumatic” and “sententous” as adjectives, and repeated plot features […]

A Study of Modern Anxiety

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

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This is an interesting book.  Yes, the narrator is self-involved and awful; at times it is very hard to root for her, and on the surface, the story is boring and deserving of hard eye-rolls.  But when you dig below the surface, and apply a little compassion, everything becomes fascinating.  The narrator doesn’t seem to really care about anything, like she’s observing her own life rather than living it — all veneer no substance  — but I found it easy to forgive her.  What I […]

Straightforward, well-researched, long-form docu-essays

Nine Pints by Rose George

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This is less a cohesive book about blood and more an anthology of long-form docu-essays loosely connected by a theme, but it was generally interesting. It takes a more historic and socio-political approach to its subject matter than a scientific one. It’s pretty straightforward, with chapters that dig a few feet past the superficial level on topics like the history of transfusion and blood donation, the business model for blood banks, how leeches factor into our medical knowledge, the history and cultural factors involved with […]

This is Why We Read

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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This is an astounding book. Profound. Heartbreakingly beautiful. Gyasi employs a narrative structure I haven’t seen before, and it is just one of a million choices she makes that is exactly right. The entire book is exactly right. Each plot point, each character, each word. Each chapter is its own stunning creation, and they all fit together with precision and symmetry into an intricate and complex quilt worthy of being hung on the wall and admired or wrapped around your shoulders and treasured. Why does […]

Self-help, minimal woo

Sober Curious: The Blissful Sleep, Greater Focus, Limitless Presence, and Deep Connection Awaiting Us All on the Other Side of Alcohol by Ruby Warrington

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Overall I loved this book, especially because I want Ruby Warrington to read me everything. This takes a look at sobriety through the lenses of wellness, marketing/capitalism, culture, and social justice — an approach I found super-accessible and non-judgemental. There are a few spots that veer into the woo too much for my liking, but it is nonetheless a very solid manifesto for non-absolutist sobriety. Of special note was one of the later chapters when Warrington probes how sobriety might fit into social justice.  It […]



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