Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Can I be a drag queen when I grow up?

The Art of Drag by Jack Hall, Sofie BIrkin, Helen Li and Jasjyot Singh Hans

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Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably seen something about the world of Drag.  Maybe it was RuPauls Drag Race (or one of the spinoffs), maybe it was Drag Queens reading to kids, maybe it was at a local drag show. But did you ever stop and think about the history of that?  When I told a friend I was reading The Art of Drag by Jack Hall, Sofie BIrkin, Helen Li, and  Jasjyot Singh Hans they thought it was up […]

The artist and her brain

Memento Mori by Tiitu Takalo

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I wanted Memento Mori by Tiitu Takalo (and Crank) to be this year’s Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story by Catherine Pioli, but it did not turn out exactly as hoped.  Still, Memento Mori is amazing and an emotional journey of life, possible death, and living, but maybe I was not as invested in the story as I was during my Pioli reading.  After all, I read hers soon after/while I was dealing with health issues of my own, so I was still pretty […]

White Privilege Pyramid Scheme

Hey Hun by Emily Lynn Paulson

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Hey Hun is the story of Emily Lynn Paulson’s time in an MLM. She is the narrator of her own audiobook. Emily changes the name of the MLM to protect herself from being sued, but she doesn’t really level anything particularly shocking against the company. The company uses the standard techniques of an MLM in that the people who start the MLM make money by recruiting more people into the company, and the people at the bottom of the pyramid who joined the company last […]

Writing for you and me and herself

Huda F Are You? by Huda Fahmy

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I have not read a lot of Huda Fahmy’s works, but what I do know is that they are an important voice in today’s literary world. Not because she is a woman or because she is Muslim, but because she is someone who is writing about experiences we all face.  I picked up Huda F Are You? (by the way, her mother hates the title) because I found an autographed copy. And while I thought Fahmy would focus more on her religious relationship, the story […]

“I can’t help thinking that the best thing that could happen to him, and to the country, would be for him to break his neck.”

In Royal Service: The Letters and Journals of Sir Alan Lascelles 1920-1936 (Vol. 2) by Sir Alan Lascelles (Edited by Duff Hart-Davis)

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This is a collection of mainly letters to friends and family from Sir Alan (“Tommy”) Lascelles, who worked as Assistant Private Secretary/Private Secretary for Edward VIII (David), the Governor-General of Canada, George V very briefly before his death, and George VI. There are also some letters from his wife and children in here as well to flesh out the portrait. The main reason to read this is the draw of Tommy’s descriptions and insight into David’s psychology and activities as the Prince of Wales, and […]

Fashionable People Doing Unfashionable Things

Deliberate Cruelty, Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century by Roseanne Montillo

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Content Warning: This book deals with murder, as the title suggests. The book also addresses spousal abuse and suicide. This review mentions the murder but does not touch on the other topics. The novel opens with a bit of snarky back-and-forth between Truman Capote and the Millionaire’s Wife of the title (Ann Woodward), establishing that the two are not on friendly terms. She allegedly uses a slur about his lifestyle (Truman Capote was openly gay) to describe him, and he calls her “Mrs. Bang Bang” […]



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