Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Highly Debatable is right

The 100 Most Jewish Foods by Alana Newhouse

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I have had an interesting run with library books lately. I have been going in for one thing and often coming out with at least one thing I hadn’t planned on. This is not a complaint, but I have to wonder if my doppelganger in terms of reading tastes may have been recently hired on there. So, on to The 100 Most Jewish Foods: A Highly Debatable List. I am not Jewish, but I do have an interest in food writing and history. This book […]

In Memory of Maida Heatter from Whom I Learned a Lot

Chocolate is Forever: Classic Cakes, Cookies, Pastries, Pies, Puddings, Candies, Confections, and More by Maida Heatter, David Lebovitz

Cookies Are Magic: Classic Cookies, Brownies, Bars, and More by Maida Heatter, Deb Perelman

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Read the recipes carefully, follow them exactly, and you will have great success My first baking teacher as a child was Betty Crocker. My second, as an adult, was Maida Heatter. The above admonition is one I ignored often and it is only through years of experience, success and failure that I have learned that there are some cookbook authors on whom you should not riff. Maida Heatter is one of those. She really did test her recipes over and over again before publishing them. […]

Try not to be too crabby that this does not come out until August

Crabapple Trouble by Kaeti VanDorn

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Due to the cover of Crabapple Trouble I was worried this might be some really bad acid trip. That fear continued when, I noticed heads did not always meet body in the illustrations and later, heads literally roll away after “popping off” of their bodies. I am assuming kids will be okay with Kaeti VanDorn’s realistic-abstract-unique characters which are sentient fruits and vegetables. But I can see some adults being unnerved by them. After all, the characters are Farmers which technically farm themselves (the lemon […]

When you take a couple city folks and try and put them in the country

Stepping Stones by Lucy Knisley

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The understatement of the year is: I am on a graphic novel kick. I realized over the past almost two years I have collected several reader copies and my library has one heck of a middle and young adult reader graphic novel section. And I have found three publishers that publisher good books that “just happen” to be graphic novels: First Second, Graphix and Random House. Random House last year put out four books in the graphic novel format presented as an unofficial series. These […]

Please Stop Profiting Off Black Women’s Ideas

Rage Baking: The Transformative Power of Flour, Fury, and Women's Voices by Katherine Alford, Kathy Gunst

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If Rage Baking is a movement, it’s one that was initially catalyzed by my physical and emotional labor in a major city and in an influential group of people. It is one that was started with the simple act of being kind and encouraging in the darkest of times. I am not at all surprised that my kindness has been overshadowed by the actions of well-intended white women. That my rage and pain has been claimed as their own and their voices centered, uplifted and […]

Queer Eye Impulse Grab a the Library

Antoni in the Kitchen by Antoni Porowski

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I like cookbooks, both to use and to read. I also like the tv show Queer Eye, although I’m behind on the most recent season. I’ve seen and heard some things about the current food guy, Antoni, so when I saw his cookbook, I kind of had to pick it up and see. The biggest thing I was curious about was what kind of food does Antoni do when he’s not necessarily trying to show someone the basics? The biggest critique on him I noticed […]



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