Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Mr. Saturday Night

Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live by Susan Morrison

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I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Saturday Night Live is 50 years old this season. (They’ve tried to keep it quiet.) That makes the time especially fortuitous for this doorstep of a book about it’s founding impresario, the inscrutable Lorne Michaels. Everyone knows who Lorne Michaels is, but even those who know him best say they don’t really know what makes him tick. Susan Morrison makes a decent stab at capturing his essence, starting with his upbringing in Toronto and the untimely death of […]

I think y’all are nuts!

The Last of the Giants: An Ultra Running Graphic Novel by Doug Mayer

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Why would anyone in their right mind want to do a 200-mile marathon? Something that would take you at least 6 days to finish? A trek that isn’t just in the “sweet, wide open mid-west of the country,” but in the Italian Alps? Well, I did say their right mind. The Last of the Giants: An Ultra Running Graphic Novel by Doug Mayer is based on Mayer’s own experiences as someone who has been on several extreme hikes. As I read via an online reader […]

I really got into Leila Boukarim books!

Mariam’s Dream: The Story of Mariam Al-Shaar and Her Food Truck of Hope by Leila Boukarim

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Leila Boukarim’s Mariam’s Dream: The Story of Mariam Al-Shaar and Her Food Truck of Hope is not a biography about a “woman done good.” Or an Arab woman “done good” or even an Arab refugee woman “done good.” It is all those things and much more. It shows that even if you were born into a situation where all you knew was being a refugee or if you have many obstacles to overcome, you can make your dream come true. Of course, that is a […]

I finally read Gender Queer!

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

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I’m sure this book has already been discoursed to death here at Cannonball Read, so I won’t get too much into that. (It was a book club pick, yes?) I finally decided to read it because I have been much more active in my local anti-censorship organization this year, and wanted to be able to better defend the book if someone came after me with questions about it. The book is so stunning, warm, and earnest. It’s the most thorough exploration of this specific form […]

“…and then I leave the door open, so I’ll be ready when the luck happens.”

Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten

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  Up next in the parade of memoirs, mostly of women, we come to Ina Garten’s Be Ready When the Luck Happens.  Off the top, I’m going to say that I knew very little about Garten, pre-reading: I knew she was called the Barefoot Contessa, and that she had a cooking show that occasionally made it into my viewing queue, and that she is a quality meme format (‘store bought is fine’), but that was about all. As it happens? I was missing out. Because Garten […]

“Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything.”

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

I Remember Nothing & Other Reflections by Nora Ephron

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Reading makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss. […]



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