Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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vel veeter's Reviews:

The Strange Career of Jim Crow – C Vann Woodward (1955)

The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C Vann Woodward

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I very much had this book mixed up with a different book, Jump Jim Crow, which is more about the musical, the minstrelsy, and the history surrounding that. This on the other hand is a completely different book about the short history of the Jim Crows laws in the South. The main takeaway from this book, as stated in the introduction, the main text, the afterword, and from an oft-cited reference to this book from Martin Luther King, is the reminder that Jim Crows laws […]

Mixed Bag of Mixed Bags

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

Steel and Other Stories by Richard Matheson

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

Going Solo by Roald Dahl

Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert Heinlein

V2 by Robert Harris

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The Wordy Shipmates – 4/5 Stars I wonder how many people know that if you’re from parts of the country, you’re basically not taught about the Puritans at all. You get the same kind of education that Sarah Vowell talks about early in this book with discussions about “the first Thanksgiving” and plenty of other oblique, but not entirely in depth look into the early colonialization of New England. In the South, you’re mostly taught about Jamestown, or your own respective colony (if you had […]

Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson (1992)

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

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Well, I remembered this book quite fondly, and might have enjoyed continuing to remember it fondly, but it’s a little rough going some 30 years on and a second time through. The book starts at full throttle and is a lot of fun for a while. Hiro Protagonist is the world’s best hacker, swordsman, and pizza delivery driver until a an eff-up at the chain causes him to be late on a delivery. This normally wouldn’t be a big deal, except that all pizza delivery […]

The Body Farm – Patricia Cornwell (1994)

The Body Farm by Patricia Cornwell

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Every time I start the next Patricia Cornwell novel, I think: I wonder if this is the one where characters won’t randomly be spouting off homophobia. Last time was close, but this time, well it’s a whole sub-plot again. She (or rather Kay) is clearly working through her feelings on the 1990s’ back and forth tension about sexuality and still not 100% how she feels about it. It’s respectable to a certain degree to have a character struggle with how she feels about it and […]

Consider the Lobster – David Foster Wallace (2005)

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

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This is a reread from years ago when this book first came out, and I think for the most part Wallace’s nonfiction is going to stick around in our consciousness longer than his fiction. For one, it’s definitely more accessible, but mainly it’s that desire he seems to have to be right on a given topic, but to earn that rightness through clear and sober investigation. This collection is anchored of course by the title essay, and it’s the more famous of the collection because […]

The Tortoise and the Hare – Elizabeth Jenkins (1954)

The Tortoise and the Hare by Elizabeth Jenkins

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We have the story of Imogen Greshman, a youngish wife of an older husband. She’s in her mid30s and he’s in his early 50s, they have kids, and recently, he’s been more busy at work than usual, and she starts to notice a kind of wandering eye. What’s inexplicable to Imogen is that he seems to be homing in on Blanche Silcox, a little more patrician and country, and more confounding to Imogen, around his age. Imogen is the hare to Blanche’s tortoise, and like […]



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