Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Unpainted Huffhines

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I love to read, one of the many personality traits I've inherited from my dad. My family lost him to cancer in September 2021.

Unpainted Huffhines's Reviews:

Read This Book Before It’s Banned

Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News by Alec Karakatsanis

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“Police leaders do not want to talk about the everyday brutality of the punishment bureaucracy. Condemning [Derek] Chauvin as a ‘bad apple’ is a safer tactic. But it is not ‘bad apple’ police officers who make 10.6 million arrests every year and who, since 1980, have helped quintuple the rate of incarceration in the U.S. from its historical average. It is not ‘bad apple’ police offers who purchase tanks and grenade launchers for themselves or who enforce cash bail. It is not ‘bad apple’ officers […]

Unreadable Things

Unspeakable Things by Jess Lourey

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Well, that’s a bit harsh … but I found Unspeakable Things by Jess Lourey difficult to follow and pretty boring. Full disclosure: I love thrillers and horror novels. The more real they are, the more terrifying I find them. So I was anticipating the experience of reading this book because it’s “inspired by a terrifying true story” according to the back of the book. And I am not super discriminating about the thrillers I read, either–I have torn through so many Freida McFadden books in […]

Burn Baby Burn

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby

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At the outset: this book is not for the faint of heart. If you’ve read any prior S.A. Cosby novels, you know that violence–gritty, ugly, cruel, unvarnished–is an integral part of his characters’ worlds. These characters are usually trying to escape violence, but it comes for them due to fate, personal choice, or some combination of both. One of my favorite aspects of Cosby’s oeuvre is that blodshed is never pretty or glorified. The main characters, because they are essentially human, despise the carnage that […]

This History Is Still Being Written

A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History by Jeanne Theoharis

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“In answer to those who claim young people protesting across the country against mass incarceration, police violence, deportation, school inequality, rising Islamophobia, global injustice, and environmental racism are nothing like the activists of the storied days of the civil rights movement, our historically informed answer must be, they are” (208). Jeanne Theoharis’ A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History has been languishing on my TBR since 2018, the year it was published. I wish I had read it earlier, […]

It Was Capitalism All Along

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams

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I read these two books practically back to back (well, with Jakob Kerr’s Dead Money sandwiched in between, for a fictional version of the profit-at-all-costs mentality), and combined with the current political climate, I’m ready to wheel out the guillotine. PRK’s Empire of Pain is, predictably, a well-researched and thorough discussion of three generations of the Sackler family, who manage to become more feckless the more distant they are from Purdue Pharma’s founding three brothers Arthur, Mortimer, and Raymond. However, the “entrepreneurial spirit” that seizes these brothers, particularly […]

Too Much Moral Ambiguity?

One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall

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I can’t really discuss One of the Good Guys without major spoilers. So be aware–this review includes spoilers. This part is not a spoiler. One of the Good Guys includes shifting perspectives among three principal characters: Cole, who has moved to a remote cabin during a contentious divorce; Mel, his soon-to-be ex-wife who seems filled with hostility toward him; and Lennie, an artist who lives near Cole and his new digs. Two young women activists who are walking along the English coast to call attention […]



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