Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Not too many “secrets” but enjoyable nonetheless.

The Secret Life of the American Musical by Jack Viertel

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#CBR11Bingo – I love this! Recently I’ve been enjoying a podcast dedicated to musical theatre and reliving my theatre kid days. So this audiobook seemed a good fit for my “I Love This!” category, as I do indeed love Broadway musicals. Jack Viertel has been involved in over 50 Broadway productions in various capacities, but mostly as a dramaturg and consultant on the writing end.  He teaches a course at NYU about the construction of the American musical, and that is what this book is […]

CBRBingo – Summer Read. More Poehler, please.

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

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CBRBingo – Summer Read Reread July 2019 (third review). As I again turn to Amy Poehler in the summer (last time, was summer 2016) I would definitely call this the quintessential summer read. Great on the beach, fun and funny, Poehler is a rollicking good time. Aside from George Orwell’s 1984 and my annual Christopher Reading of “The Stupidest Angel” this is the only other book I have reread since I was a kid. It is equal parts memoir and self-help and Poehler is a […]

Bucolic listening

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Because I’ve been consumed with one of those jobs that requires 12 hours- a-day attention, I haven’t been reading much, but I do get to have some time with my precious audio books, and so I turned my attention to something more literary for my last listen, knowing I wouldn’t be getting do that with a physical book. Some spoilers follow! The narrator of Never Let Me Go has a comforting, almost bucolic way of telling the story. Can a person speak in a bucolic […]

“The fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice.” (Bingo)

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

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#CBR11 Bingo: Listicle (on a bunch of best of 2018 lists, including NPR, Bustle and Bookbub). Would also work for “Award Winner”, as it’s won a Locus Award, and ALA Award and an Audie, or “Remix”, as it’s a fairy tale retelling. Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of Jewish moneylenders, but her father is a dreadful one, who doesn’t have the heart to actually claim back the debts that the villagers owe, even when his daughter is starving and the long, cold winters are making his wife sicker and […]

“I don’t really have any dreams beyond comfortable pants and unlimited sparkling water” (Bingo)

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby

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#CBR11 Bingo: The Collection (Could also work for True Story, Cannonballer Says, Own Voices and Rainbow Flag) Official book description: Sometimes you just have to laugh, even when life is a dumpster fire. With We Are Never Meeting in Real Life., “bitches gotta eat” blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making “adult” budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette–she’s “35-ish, but could easily […]

“Arrange your ideas. Be methodical. Be orderly. There is the secret of success.” – Not Hastings

The Murder on the Links (Hercule Poirot, #2) by Agatha Christie

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Okay, first of all, Hastings is an *idiot*. I don’t think I quite realized that in the other books I’ve read with him in them. He’s supposedly modeled after Watson from the Sherlock Holmes stories, an audience surrogate character, but Watson gets an unfair rap about his bumbling—a side effect of his characterization on film rather than evidence in the canon—whereas Hastings is genuinely a boob, and one that doesn’t realize the extent of his boobitude. In this one, not only does he get everything […]



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