Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Now is a good time to become familiar with social determinants of health

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

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What a time to be alive and listening to John Green narrate his book, Everything is Tuberculosis. I’ve been listening to it slowly because I am always on the verge of a rage stroke and I want to outlive the current administration. I listened to the last chapter and post script hours after reading that the Department of Education has decided that nursing is no longer a profession. I’m lucky to be alive. Sophia’s review of Everything is Tuberculosis is probably better balanced, because I […]

The unofficial Best and Worst List 2025 (so far!)

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I know I put in the official Best and Worst List but honestly out of almost 600 reviews (and several I haven’t posted yet) I’m going to have more than three best and one worst. Therefore, I am going to honor y’all with my list of only the ones I have posted a review for here that could have been used. The bold are the ones I used in the official count, italics almost used and the rest were on the list. WORST DAYGLOAYHOLE #1 […]

Was vast social inequality and control inevitable? A dense, meticulously researched final work from anarchist anthropologist David Graeber says “no.”

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber, David Wengrow

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I’ve been putting off reading this 704-page book for a few years, believing it deserved time and attention I didn’t have. David Graeber, who died suddenly in 2020, was an anthropologist and activist, an anarchist philosopher who, through confronting social inequality in unrelenting, novel, and thoroughly-source and -reasoned manner carved his way into a central role in the field. I’ve always found Graeber to be able to reorient entire areas of society so they made sense—and nonsense—in novel ways. Debt: The First 5000 Years and […]

Science augmenting the human body

Replaceable You by Mary Roach

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Although it’s been a number of years since I’ve read a book by Mary Roach, I have read quite a few. Mary Roach writes non-fiction–digging into whatever topic seems to catch her fancy. Quite often this topic is at least a little bit taboo. She’s written a book about sex (Bonk), death (Stiff), and ghosts (Spook). When I was told her latest book was coming out, I immediately put a hold on it at the library. Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy (2025) is Roach’s latest […]

Golden Girls with Feet of Clay

The It Girls by Caroline Young

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Nowadays, when one thinks of someone who’s “famous for being famous,” one thinks of the Kardashians or Instagram influencers. But the phenomenon of the It girl is a long and storied one. I read this at about the same time as I read Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century, and they work pretty well as companions – that book describing trendsetting fashion, and this book describing the trendsetters themselves. Young tells the story of It girls through the centuries, who hold such diverse […]

The Puppy Primer – An Engaging Guide to Puppy and Human Behavior

The Puppy Primer (Second Ed.) by Patricia B. McConnell, PhD, and Brenda Scidmore

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Recently, someone gave my ex-spouse a puppy, a tiny rat terrier who seems to be composed largely of clever brown eyes and tiny razor-sharp teeth since the remainder of his body wiggles at speeds that make it difficult to fully perceive. Unfortunately, my ex also became very ill, and asked me to care for this small, legged shark, whom my ex (probably because he was sick) hadn’t yet taught not to gnaw on people. I agreed, but I began to pay a price in bloody […]



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