Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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 […]

Thanks to my public library system, I’m in my Julia Turshen cookbook era

Feed the Resistance: Recipes and Ideas for Getting Involved by Julia Turshen

What Goes With What by Julia Turshen

In Bibi's Kitchen by Hawa Hassan with Julia Turshen

Now & Again by Julia Turshen

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I finally got a library card (long story) and I have been checking out cookbooks like you would not believe. I am so excited by the variety of cookbooks I now have available to me. I am bonding with one of my local librarians, who also checks out cookbooks. A week ago, I found myself with a stack of cookbooks and suddenly realized Julia Turshen was listed as an author on all of them. This was totally unintentional as one had been requested as a […]

Brrrruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce

Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin

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For the second time this year, I’m reviewing a book about just one album by Bruce Springsteen. Perhaps Peter Ames Carlin, who had already written a biography of Springsteen (which I have not read) was inspired by the success of Warren Zanes’s Deliver Me From Nowhere, which has been adapted into a biopic coming out in a few months. His book, Tonight in Jungleland, purports to tell the story of Bruce’s big, breakthrough album, Born to Run. An immediate sensation that landed Bruce on the […]

A beat-up book that made me think people need this book

Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness. by Kristen Radtke

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If you want to feel really bad about yourself, read Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness. Or, just as likely, if you want to feel great about yourself, read this graphic novel by Kristen Radtke. There are some contradictions, some places you will see yourself and see friends and/or family. It is slow reading, but busy. The book’s theme is, as the title says, about loneliness. Radtke talks about how it has its has ups and downs, in an almost poetic fashion with both […]

So, I took this book with to a Dr appointment to read in the waiting room…

Notes from a Sickbed by Tessa Brunton

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During a long weekend (I had to take a Monday off for a doctor’s appointment) I read two memoirs and one non-fiction graphic novel on loneliness (which I had been working on for weeks).  I started Notes from a Sickbed by Tessa Brunton before I went to my doctor’s appointment and brought it with me. The considerate person in me felt it was probably not the most appropriate read to read there, but the smarty pants in me was laughing my pants off at the […]



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