Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The King’s Daughter

From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley, Riley Keough

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I don’t want to be the bad guy here, considering how much pain and death is involved, but this is a book that doesn’t really have a lot to offer. It’s admittedly been cobbled together from Lisa Marie’s notes, with her daughter Riley Keough plugging in the gaps and even including audio tapes of her mother’s recollections where there were no notes to use. I listened to this on audiobook, with Keough narrating her parts, Lisa Marie occasionally appearing on tape, and Julia Roberts reading […]

Secret Agent Man

A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré

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John Le Carré’s books are often labors of love to read. This was both love and labor with neither of them necessarily intertwining. I don’t want to go into details but there was a specific moment at my job this past week where I had to face down reminders of a rough work moment from years before. Nothing bad in terms of abuse or harassment but awful stuff. And it felt good to be reading “Magnus Pym’s” (Le Carré’s, David Cornwell’s) story at the same […]

Few triggers but overall a delightful read

Layers: A Memoir by Pénélope Bagieu

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This weekend was unintentionally a weekend where I learned I have read so much that I’m repeating authors and not even realizing it! One of the books I read was Layers: A Memoir by Pénélope Bagieu (translated by Montana Kane). When I saw what else they had written I was shocked. I’ve read several of their books in English. I started with the title Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World (lovely collection of women who were brazen); California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas […]

A Personal Story of Deconstruction

The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon

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The story: The Exvangelicals is a nonfiction book written by Sarah McCammon, who grew up in the white evangelical Christian movement in the 80s and 90s. As an adult, she deconstructed (began examining and questioning her religious beliefs), and discovered that many others who had grown up in the same circumstances as her were doing the same. The book includes recollections from her childhood and her deconstruction process, interviews with others who have left the white evangelical church, and information on the history and current status of […]

“I want – I want – I want – was all that she could think about – but just what this real want was she did not know.”

Carson McCullers: A Life by Mary V. Dearborn

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CBR16 Bingo: Pride – McCullers and many people in her life were queer, one of the main struggles of her life was trying to come to terms with and better understand that queer identity, which also infused her writing. Carson McCullers is one of the most acclaimed authors of the Southern Gothic genre, but she was also a complicated woman with a messy personal life who constantly strove toward goals that, though she did not reach always reach them, created beautiful things along the way. […]

Three-Four-One

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Despite the backlash due to Coates’ writing and speeches on his time in Palestine, there are really three narratives in this travelogue. The Palestine one is the third one and it’s the one I’m going to spend as little time as possible on because I don’t want this page to be a forum on what’s happening there right now. I actually think the best essay here is the first one, where Coates finds himself in Dakar, Senegal. He has written at length about the rejection […]



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