Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A boy named Henry

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

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CBR17Bingo: “Borders” – because even though bacteria do not respect borders, whether you contract or can fight off tuberculosis depends primarily on where you live. I know tuberculosis still exists in the United States because many years ago I had a patient cough in my face and later found out she suffered from tuberculosis. I knew just enough to be kind of concerned until I got tested and was negative. My only other knowledge of tuberculosis is that Doc Holliday suffered from it in Tombstone. It […]

A love letter to the NHS

This is going to hurt by Adam Kay

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The NHS being a demanding mistress, that is.  Adam Kay is a screenwriter for various UK TV shows, but before he switched careers he was a doctor specialising in gynaecology and obstetrics. During his studies, he was advised to keep a diary. Years after switching careers, he received a letter from the Medical Board of Whatever stating that they’d struck him from the professional register as he hadn’t practised medicine in years. It led him to revisit his diaries, now presented here in book form.  […]

“My unhappiness was rooted in my mother’s inability to stop drinking.”

There Was a Little Girl by Brooke Shields

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CBR17Bingo: “School” – because Brooke Shields talks a lot about the process of getting into Princeton and how much that school changed her life. I’d recently seen some media of Brooke Shields talking about her childhood, so she was in the back of my mind when I was hunting for another audiobook to listen to on my commute. Memoirs read by the author are some of my favorite audiobooks, so I was happy to pick up There Was a Little Girl (2015) by Brooke Shields and get […]

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”–Benjamin Franklin

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

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I think I saw The Psychology of Money (2021) by Morgan Housel on a “best of” non-fiction list somewhere, although I am not certain. I have a lot of fear when it comes to investing and saving my money. I also have a (reasonable?) fear of not having enough money to live comfortably and falling into ruin. It probably doesn’t help that whatever we had of a safety net in the United States feels like it’s rapidly deteriorating. So, I tend to be pretty conservative when it […]

Where everything is explained

Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

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CBR17Bingo: “Play” – because Gladwell discusses sports at Harvard I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell back in 2009 and found it interesting. Since then I’ve read a number of other books by Gladwell that I’ve liked in varying amounts. When I saw that Gladwell had written Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering (2024), I was curious enough to pick up the audiobook. Gladwell uses examples to show how overstories, superspreaders, and group makeup influence a number of things in our […]

Impact of books and other really cool things

The Blue Jays That Grew a Forest by Lynn Street

Little Monk Writes Rain by Hsu-Kung Liu

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As you know I enjoy reading picture books. They are not just for the “kid crowd” as I have found (and highly encourage others  to do so, too) many books that give me information about something or someone I was unfamiliar with. I also find poetry, poetic prose, silliness and much more. But sometimes I am unable to write a “full review” so I must combine them to make one larger review. I do try to “theme” them, and I hope I did with the […]



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