Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sweet and and a Little Salty

Nice Try: Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results by Josh Gondelman

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Best for: Fans of gentle storytelling and humor. In a nutshell: Comedian and writer Gondelman tells stories from his life, usually with a humorous take, and often with a bit more self-awareness than one gets from such books. Worth quoting: N/A Why I chose it: I’m most familiar with Gondelman as a panelist on the NPR show Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, and I follow him on BlueSky, but didn’t realize he had a book, so figured I would check it out. Review: This is […]

Queen of Play Makes Everyone’s Day

Odder: An Otter's Story (Picture book) by Katherine Applegate and Charles Santoso

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I was in the right mood the other day when I found an online copy of Odder: An Otter’s Story (Picture book) by Katherine Applegate and Charles Santoso (the lovely illustrator). Because this book could be considered overly saccharine and too sugary sweet. And when something is overly sweet I can really be a real Scrooge and a Humbug it. Yet, I was in the mood for something sweet, cuddly that just might make you have a tear (or ten) in your eye. Due in […]

I’m trying to think of a clever title that will grab attention but it all seems to frivolous for the subject

Run and Hide: How Jewish Youth Escaped the Holocaust by Don Brown

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The haunting cover of Run and Hide: How Jewish Youth Escaped the Holocaust by Don Brown does not really give you the whole picture of what is going to happen inside this book, but it is a great start. There are layers that will overlap, some things are familiar, others will give you more insight and others might be new stories or concepts. It does not feel like a subject for a graphic novel, but the subject translates well into this format, but it works […]

Unorthodox and Unashamed

Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and a Saint by Nadia Bolz-Weber

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I have been following Nadia Bolz-Weber on social media for a few years now and I subscribe to her newsletter. I find her preaching to be witty, funny, cutting, provocative and deeply spiritual. It has been most welcome over the years as I have tried to deal with the problems of everyday life and the larger fucked up world. Bolz-Weber has written several books but I believe this was the first and it sort of provides the “origin story” for Pastrix Nadia, a Lutheran pastor […]

The Original “Poor Little Rich Girl”

Million Dollar Baby by Philip Van Rensselaer

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I spent half of this book wondering if I’d read it before but enjoying it so much I dashed through it in about a day. It is very entertaining and readable, and you can understand why Barbara Hutton took on Philip as a companion. He is a fun narrator and gets across emotion and events very well. Million Dollar Baby is a biography of Barbara Hutton and a memoir the time that Van Rensselaer spent with her in the late 1950s. It is not at […]

Racism is a very real thing, even in Norway

Kvit, norsk mann (White Norwegian man) by Brynjulf Jung Tjønn

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Nowhere Bingo 2025: A poetry collection The author of this poetry collection was adopted from South Korea by a childless Norwegian couple when he was three years old. Throughout this rather short, but very impactful poetry collection, he writes about his constant feeling of exclusion and lack of belonging. As a child of Asian descent in a small western Norwegian village surrounded by white people, he obviously stood out among the other children. Adopted by farmers to take over their farm when they grew old, […]



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