Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“One’s house is very important. It is the third and outermost of the shells that encase us.”

Old Madam Yin: A Memoir of Peking Life by Ida Pruitt

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Another book from my Stanford University Press sale haul. Old Madam Yin is a memoir of Ida Pruitt’s friendship with Madam Yin between 1926 and 1938. While there is a sociological and ethnographic lens here, with Pruitt working to explain the workings of Chinese society to a Western audience, the book works more today as a historical glimpse into the beginnings of the destruction of Madam Yin’s way of life, as well as the culture clash between Westerners and the Chinese. Pruitt was born and […]

“a human looking glass: the light cast by fame bounced off her, and back on to those facing her” CBRBINGO – Golden

Q: A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. I’m so glad I took a chance on this one and requested the ARC. It was so much fun! It avoided literally everything that usually makes me avoid reading biographies: the tedious linear structure, the grandiloquence and navel-gazing that comes with writing about a much-lauded (or controversial) figure (and the author trying to “earn it”), and to be honest, the dull bits. Q: A Voyage Around the Queen is not […]

Corey’s faith

Visitations by Corey Egbert

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Visitations by Corey Egbert is more of a rating of 3.5 than a pure 4 as there were areas I would have liked to have seen “more” of the story (I like that we don’t have a lot of “before divorce” (just enough to let you know what has happened) but seeing more of the Visitations (what their mother calls the time Corey and his sister, Sarah, have with their father) would be interesting. Afterall, this is part of the title. And I would have […]

From the Magical to the Personal: Two Reviews

Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

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Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis was such a blast. It features Dread Lord Gavrax, a dark wizard (and a mediocre one at that, we learn as the story progresses). Except that Gav has no memories of this. He wakes up with amnesia, freaks out when he realizes he appears to be in a dark lord’s lair, and quickly comes to realize that he is said dark lord. He then spends a good chunk of the book trying to hide this fact from potential enemies while also […]

“I suppose one has to have lived in the U.S.S.R. to know what a priceless treasure security is.”

Liberation — Russian Style by Ada Halpern

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My mom suggested I read this and I’m glad she did (she knows me well and this is the sort of book that’s right up my alley). Liberation — Russian Style is short at only 106 pages, but it packs a big emotional punch and really drives home the inhumanity of the forced civilian deportations by the Soviet government during WWII. This is one of those overlooked historical events in the American understanding of the US, I think, but millions of people were forcibly deported, […]

Looking to Raise Your Blood Pressure? Here Ya Go.

Escape by Carolyn Jessop

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cbr16 bingo cults This book went on my To-Read list decades ago, when the Warren Jeffs scandal was still new.  For me, I couldn’t understand why a woman would put up with this.  This on-the-ground account is revelatory and explains the dynamics that are still at work today. Carolyn Jessop was a sixth generation Mormon, and not your mainstream Mormon, but a member of FLDS, a fundamentalist cult (since it has been disavowed by the mainstream church, I’m gonna call it what it is.)  At […]



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