Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sorting the science from the fiction

So you think you know What's Good For You? by Dr Norman Swan

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Dr Norman Swan still has a lovely Glaswegian accent even though he’s lived in Australia for decades and I loved hearing his voice in my mind the whole time I was reading this book. Which didn’t turn out to be very long actually, as I finished it over a couple of days. Covering topics from nutrition and exercise to mental health and use of electronic devices, So you think you know What’s Good For You? is Dr Swan’s attempt to give people the knowledge they […]

A world of compulsory sexuality and how it hurts us all

Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen

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This book claims to provide an important perspective of what asexuality can teach us about intimacy and sex more generally. Boy does it deliver. I picked this book up on recommendation from the cannonball brain trust and am only too happy I did. I heard about asexuality first a few years ago and it made very little sense to me. I didn’t know anyone personally who identified that way, so I sought out documentaries to help fill me in. These did not help clarify what, […]

A book that actually made me start exercising again, despite (or possibly because of) the name

Jeg hater å trene (I hate to exercise) by Brita Zackari

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Brita Zackari is a Swedish ex-model, TV presenter, and the writer of this book – about how she absolutely and utterly hates exercising, how she first started dieting before she was ten, and how diets are the absolute worst thing you can do to your body, but the patriarchy and modern society pretty much brainwash us into thinking we need to be thinner and fitter and that diets are a way to achieve that. As she says in the book, female bodies very rarely get […]

The World’s Deadliest Animal

The Fever: How Malaria has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah

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CBR Bingo: The Wilds (all about malaria, mosquitoes, and pesticides) There’s nothing I like reading about more than infectious disease. I’ve read books about rabies, smallpox, influenza, cholera, plague, and lots of others, but I’d never found one about malaria before, so I was really excited to read The Fever. Sadly, I had a lot of trouble getting into this book. Malaria is really hard to understand. It has a complex disease process, and while Shah breaks it down in the first chapter, I still had trouble […]

Caution: Baby does more than Bite.

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

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Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage book is a highly recommended book. It is on lists of great thrillers. Banned books to read. And even for book groups. However, I am not totally a hundred percent sure why. I learned after starting it, several people had a variety of “not liking” comments. One person could not finish it. Others felt that while it was worth the read, but felt a few other titles were stronger. This mixed batch of love and eh was what I felt. […]

The curse? A gift? Or both? The Man who lived Dracula

Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Dracula by Koren Shadmi

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Lugosi was a victim of his own ego, arrogance, selfishness, pride, and need for attention as he was of the whims of Hollywood and society. And in Koren Shadmi’s Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Dracula you see it fangs and all. This graphic novel shows the highs and lows (lots of lows, most of his own making) of Lugosi’s life. Done mostly chronologically, the highlights of the past and present are show in rotation.  The past starts as a child, the fights he […]



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