Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About thewheelbarrow

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I'm a 41yo father of three. My goal is to write as I read. Like it is every year.

thewheelbarrow's Reviews:

The Start of Another Great Trilogy

The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy #1) by Rick Atkinson

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I moved back to Virginia this year and it seems to have kicked off a huge Revolutionary War kick for me. I read Nathaniel Philbrick’s trilogy and I started this one. I would have read this one anyway as I am a big fan of  Atkinson’s WWII based Liberation Trilogy. Then I got to meet Atkinson at the National Book Festival which made me more excited for this book. The British Are Coming covers the first two-ish years of the American Revolution. Much like the […]

Very specific historical non-fiction

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester

The Hello Girls: America's First Women Soldiers by Elizabeth Cobbs

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Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman was a fun little footnote of history expanded into an interesting book. The Oxford English Dictionary is THE authority for words in the english language and this book describes what was essentially the invention of dictionaries and the significance that had. The compilation of words for the dictionary required a massive effort so Professor James Murray requested the assistance of the public. That’s when Dr. W. C. Minor began contributing words and first usages to the OED.  Minor […]

One of my faves this year

Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News by Clint Watts

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I read Like War earlier this year by P.W. Singer which has the subtitle, the Weaponization of Social Media. I was at a conference for work and I was discussing the book with a colleague and she recommended Clint Watts to me.  She said that if I liked Singer, I’d love Watts.  Then one of her co-workers came up and raved about Watts and added that their organization works with him and that he was both brilliant and great. I added Messing with the Enemy […]

Manifest Destiny was SO cool!

The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West by David McCullough

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I read a lot of the criticism about this book when it came out. That it was another white-washing of history and I must admit that I considered that perhaps the outrage was directed more at the idea of the book than the book itself. McCullough is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner after all. Perhaps, I thought, he would discuss the ideas in an objective way that did not avoid the inherent issues with the idea of the pioneers moving west. I am very interested […]

Absolutely, Positively Not YA

Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga #4) by Pierce Brown

Dark Age (Red Rising Saga #5) by Pierce Brown

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So, I planned on writing a big post last year or the year before about wether or not the Red Rising series is YA. I do not remember where I fell on the spectrum then but I know, without a doubt, that I fall firmly in the NOT YA camp now. That said, I would absolutely let my children read these books and encourage any reader who was interested to read them. I tend to consider readers a little more mature than the average person […]

Say one thing for Joe Abercrombie, he knows grimdark

A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness #1) by Joe Abercrombie

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I am a HUGE fan of Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series which began with an original trilogy but has sprouted three additional stand alone novels and a collection of short stories. This is the first book in a new trilogy called the Age of Madness. It’s been a few years since Abercrombie visited the First Law series but that is because he spent several years writing all three books of this series at once. He wanted to be better with his continuity and ensure that […]



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