Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

In the Early 1980s Fujiwara Maki began a picture diary

My Picture Diary by Maki Fujiwara

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My Picture Diary is an odd little book. It is a day-to-day/day in the life of the author, Maki Fujiwara (also illustrated by) and her family. Things are fairly dull on the surface, but a lot is going on nonetheless. You can see the era (the late 1970s/early 1980s) and the culture and country (Japan); and of course, the husband and wife and the parent(s) and child relationships. The illustrations are simple, but deceptively so. The style itself is not overly detailed, but they do […]

Great Reporting, But Not My Favorite

Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs by Jamie Loftus

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Best for: People interested in the history of hot dogs in the US, told through a sort of travelogue / memoir hybrid. In a nutshell: Author Loftus travels the US to taste all manner of hot dogs, while sharing the stories and history of those who sell them. Worth quoting: N/A Why I chose it: I adore Loftus’s podcast ‘Sixteenth Minute.’ Review: I wish I liked this book more than I did. I only became aware of Loftus’s work this year, when her podcast ‘Sixteenth […]

She got the picture

Imogen: The Life and Work of Imogen Cunningham by Elizabeth Partridge

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Imogen: The Life and Work of Imogen Cunningham was written by her granddaughter, Elizabeth Partridge and illustrated by Yuko Shimizu. I read via an online reader copy and the book is due later in August 2025. That is a dull introduction but Imogen Cunningham’s life was anything but dull. She was a younger child who was beloved by her father, who does seem to maybe spoil her a little bit, but also believed in her. He made sure she had paints all for herself when […]

War. Hunh. What’s It Good For.

The Village of Ben Suc by Jonathan Schell

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Since my high school days, I have been a stanch advocate of magazines.  Fashion, of course, at least back in the day.  (Ah, Seventeen, you were a teen age dream.)  But many others as well.  Fought my way through many a Scientific American.  Roamed the world with National Geographic.  All the generic news magazines, (was definitely Team Time) as well as many of the more partisan sort, although many wussed out as years went by.  But my one tried and true was The New Yorker.  […]

Men are naturally hot and dry and women are naturally cold and damp. Guess which is good?

The Once and Future Sex by Eleanor Janega

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Accessibly written history on how medieval society viewed women and how they viewed themselves. Spoiler alert – the “natural” woman is straight up the opposite of what society thinks is “natural” now. I’ve recently fallen down a Youtube rabbit hole on History Hit. I am finding it somewhat reassuring to learn about other times in history that have dealt with seemingly insurmountable issues that were, eventually, surmounted. So when I learned that one of their historians wrote the history of medieval women? Girl, I ran […]

“For even to listen to the story of the Trưng Sisters is, in these troubled times, a dangerous act.”

Bronze Drum by Phong Nguyen

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The Trưng sisters, Trắc and Nhi, are as different than each other than sisters can be, but they are united in one thing – their outrage at the treatment of the Viet by the colonizing Han Chinese. When their outrages grow too heavy to bear, they raise an army of women to fight back. It occurred to me while I was reading this book that not only do I know very little about Vietnam past the eponymous war (and even that mostly through the eyes […]



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