Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure

A Noble Madness: The Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now by James Delbourgo

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CBR17 Bingo: N – Re: the title. The obsessive collector in history has worn many faces – a magician, a scientist, a connoisseur, a madman – but whether they are a force for good or evil in their societies is a more complicated question. When I think of collectors I usually think of the modern kind who collects some specific category of kitsch because they like them, be it stuffed animals or porcelain figurines or Stephen King novels. As someone who dislikes clutter and has […]

Casseroles, Jello Salads, and Few Funny Names

1982 United Methodist Recipes Albion NE by Albion United Methodist Church

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Bingo 11: Red I thought I’d dropped something into a box of very old things belonging to my grandmother and great-aunt so I dug through it for the first time in a long while. Turns out I hadn’t dropped the thing (found it a few minutes later under something else) but it was not a wasted search because in the box was a church cookbook (probably my great-aunts) from the year I was born, and guess what color the cover is? Going through a 43-year […]

You are all Dead Spirits

Warra Warra Wai: How Indigenous Australians discovered Captain Cook, and what they tell about the coming of the Ghost People by Darren Rix; Craig Cormick

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So as a school kid in Australia back in the nineties, I remember being taught, like many of my peers, the Captain Cook ‘discovered’ Australia. Except that wasn’t quite true, was it? To add all the qualifiers, Cook and his crew are probably best described as the first set of Europeans to visit the east coast of Australia …after the dutch sort of poked around in the west.  But very little discussion time was given to the people that had lived in Australia for tens […]

The Past Is a Different Country

The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan by Ivan Morris

American Monsters by Adam Jortner

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CBR17 Bingo: Favorite – Both books are history books about fairly specialized, off beat topics – my favorite kind. The World of the Shining Prince by Ivan Morris – 5 stars For about a century about a millennium ago, a strange era flourished in Japan where a series of boy emperors were ruled by their in-laws (who were also their grandparents, cousins, and aunts), beauty was virtue, and the failure to catch the vaguest conversational allusion to a poem spelled social ruin. This book is […]

The woman who made snow in Puerto Rico and other amazing things

Doña Fela's Dream: The Story of Puerto Rico's First Female Mayor by Monica Brown

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Women have been out and about in the political world since politics started. But they just never get the credit they deserve. Like Felisa Rincaon de Gautier or more commonly known as Dona Fela. She was a young woman during the time when many women, even those of privilege, could not read and none had the right to vote. She saw this injustice (and others) and helped where she could well into her adulthood. One day, after a tragic event, she would be asked to […]

Baby Blue your friends got you

Baby Blue by Bim Eriksson

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Baby Blue by Bim Eriksson and translator Melissa Bowers was another one of those books I looked at the cover of and said, “Why did I request this?” (As I got it through my library). I don’t remember why, but as I sit here typing this review, I think it probably is getting some attention for the fact it is pretty awesome (if not a “What did I read?” and one of the more odd reads of the year so far) book. I think it […]



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