Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A new perspective

When Crack Was King by Donovan X. Ramsey

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I found When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era (2023) by Donovan X. Ramsey on NPR’s Favorite Books last year. I needed another audiobook for my commute and decided to give it a try. Ramsey grew up in the 80’s and 90’s during the worst of the crack cocaine epidemic. In this book, he delves into how it affected people’s lives, how it became such a problem, people’s perception of the crack epidemic, and the government’s response to it. Ramsey follows four people who suffered […]

v late to the roman tiktok thing

A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome by Emma Southon

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I picked this up because of that viral trope about how all straight men think about ancient Rome constantly. And it tickled me that one of the foremost experts on the Roman Empire is a woman, and this book has a pink cover. Emma Southon delivers a snarky history of Roman murder that’s as engaging as a book on such a niche and distant topic can be. If we’re not learning about Nazis or something else that requires deep gravitas, then I’d much prefer a […]

When Life was bored, Death took a holiday

Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis by Dave Maass, Patrick Lay, Ezra Rose and Richard Bruning

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Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis by Dave Maass, Patrick Lay, Ezra Rose and  Richard Bruning, is a lofty graphic novel undertaking. Over the top. Beautiful and Ugly. It is not an allegory of the Holocaust, but its roots are there. This is a story of how the General Overall  takes with his War. It is fiction, and it is history. It is the past, present and future. Bored, flamboyant Life wants something to happen to stop their boredom. And Death gives it. They are […]

An AI-assisted review experiment

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

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Edited to add this PSA: please see below for the to-be-official stance on use of AI in Cannonball–tl;dr the CBR board has determined based on this experience and like, *waves* all of this, that AI reviews don’t fit the ethos of what CBR is all about. I can attest to this–I probably spent 2-3x as long end to end doing this one review, but felt about a tenth as satisfied as I usually do writing a review! Hopefully everyone felt the extreme experimentation vibe of […]

anyone else want a “how fascism fell” reminder?

The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945 by Richard J. Evans

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If you’ve made it to this final installment of Evans’ trilogy on the Third Reich, you’re probably already a fan of his style. Having diligently followed the chain of events from Kaiser Wilhelm to Hitler, this book picks up the story where the Nazi regime is at war—essentially, the beginning of the end. And while we know the ending, it’s still shocking to read just how close Hitler and Germany came to winning early on through sheer audacity (long before the war really got going). […]

“If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

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I started A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) by Amor Towles with high expectations. When my book club chose this book, one of my friends (who often aligns with me as far as liking similar novels) said it was one of her favorite books. And then the New York Times had it high on its list of best books of the 21st Century. Even when I started the first chapter, I really liked the tone of the novel. Unfortunately, my expectations were a little too high. […]



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