Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Life on a Cult TV Show – While Also in an Actual Cult!

Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz

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CBR16 Bingo: Rings – A lot of people get married in this book – at least four couples, including the author Lenz to the cult leader’s son. Bethany Joy Lenz is famous for playing Haley James Scott in the cult TV show One Tree Hill, but her experience of this time is even stranger than one would expect – she was in an actual cult at the time. I never watched One Tree Hill, but with a premise like that, who cares? Besides, TV show […]

The food she ate, the wine she drunk, and the sexy times in between

An Age of License: A Travelogue by Lucy Knisley

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If I had An Age of License: A Travelogue by Lucy Knisley before her others, I don’t think I would have liked her writing as much as I do. Usually her work has a humorous edge to things, even when it is the serious story of dating, getting married or having a baby. Her semi-autobiographical books (the younger readers) also are lighter and great in color and details but are not overwhelming. With her travelogue graphic novel we are given a journal/diary of a few […]

A few muffins, scones, and cakes to go with the stories

Donna Bell's Bake Shop by Pauley Perrette, Darren Greenblatt, Matthew Sandusky

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Bingo 17: Vintage Cookbook about vintage style baking bakery. Donna Bell’s Bake Shop apparently closed in 202, thanks to the pandemic. But before that, it was a Southern-style bakery in NYC. One of the main selling points was the recipes from the name sake Donna Bell, who is one of the owners’ mother. Most of the recipes are pretty straight forward, almost to the point of basic. I kind of have to wonder that if this kind of thing is what the bakery actually marketed, […]

Short Work

I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short

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For most of its brief length, I Must Say is a fairly good but standard exemplar of the celebrity memoir. The early struggle, the camaraderie of breaking into show business and finding your people, the name-droppy stories about show business parties,  and some behind the scenes anecdotes from his films and TV shows, which in Short’s case obviously includes SCTV, Three Amigos, SNL, Father of the Bride, winning a Tony, etc. (I Must Say was published in 2014, long before the advent of Only Murders […]

Hustled

Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball by Keith O'Brien

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Read as Part of CBR16 Bingo: games. Pete Rose is a former baseball player and this is a book based on his life. As I said last year in my review from Eight Men Out, I’ve always had mixed feelings on Pete Rose. Along with the Black Sox, he’s the one most famously banned from baseball due to a sort of gambling scandal. The rampant denialism got under my skin and I’ve just never liked the guy. I’ve softened a little, not because Rose has […]

“In headlines and news copy, we call them “the mentally ill.” In truth, they are our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters. They are us.”

While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence by Meg Kissinger

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This book was the selection for my local library book club and they came out swinging with a real heartbreaker for the first selection for our new year. It’s the first non-fiction that I can remember us readingnand rife for discussion. It is so raw and sad but well written that you’ll read past the point where your heart can take it. I was gripped by her storytelling but eventually had to take a break (see also my review of Kevin Kwan’s Lies and Weddings which […]



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