Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Real Housewives of Fort Benning

The Wives: A Memoir by Simone Gorrindo

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cbr17bingo Purple Simone is a New Yorker who has just landed her dream job, as an editor.  And now maybe she will have some time to devote to her own writing projects, too.  Her husband, on the other hand, has different plans.  He has joined an elite Army combat unit, and is looking forward to doing his share by shipping out to Afghanistan.  But it’s all good, right, because she can work from home, at whatever Army base home ends up being.  All right, let’s […]

Early Fall Leftovers

To Start A War: How the Bush Administration Took Us Into Iraq by Robert Draper

The Travelers by Chris Pavone

A Walk Among the Tombstones by Lawrence Block

Dark Fire by CJ Sansom

The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation by Robert Rand

Stasi Child by David Young

The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

The Devil Knows You're Dead by Lawrence Block

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I’ve read some interesting stuff lately and I wish I had made more time to document it but life gets in the way that life sometimes does. Not all bad, just life. To Start A War**** I had a long thing here about connecting this to the 2024 election but I don’t want to talk current electoral politics on here, at least the specifics of them. A good book if you want to know the intelligence (ha) perspective of how we wound up in a […]

“If there is any lesson to be learned from the intervention in Afghanistan, it is perhaps the difficulty of learning lessons.”

Losing Afghanistan: An Obituary for the Intervention by Noah Coburn

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I got this through a Stanford University Press sale for a very good deal (they do this sale once a year, I believe, so keep an eye out). Then it sat on a shelf for a while until I finally determined last month to work through the books I got from this sale — the unintended consequences of too good a deal is a bunch of academic books that sit around for a few years. I’m glad that I did finally pick this up because […]

Hop on the bus, Gus You don’t need to discuss much…just say your ABCs

The Library Bus by Bahram Rahman

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The Library Bus by Bahram Rahman will see a paperback edition in August of 2022. This story is about how some Afghan girls are able to achieve an education. Once a week, a young girl’s mother, in the dark of the morning, takes a special bus with no seats but a lot of books off to a village and the refugee camp. Pari’s (our young narrator) mother also teaches the children the English alphabet. We, and Pari, learn a little about why this is happening, […]

James Ellroy meets the War on Terror in the search for Honor and Soul

Pukhtu Primo by DOA

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In the fast-paced depiction of the war in Afghanistan at the end of 2000s, French author DOA depicts the search for the Afghan soul, the “Pukthu” – the code of honor and justice, that his characters pursue in vain. Retired warlords, rogue mercenaries, lost soldiers and tired journalists look for meaning and truth in a chaotic world that does not make sense anymore. Though well researched and entertaining, the book’s characters feel somehow a bit unoriginal. A sense of deja-vue echoes through the narrative of […]

Let me tell you about a secret

Nasreen’s Secrete School by Jeanette Winter

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Jeanette Winter’s style comes alive in this 2009 picture book, Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan. The colors of the illustrations are rich, deep, and plentiful. I have always appreciated how things are fanciful and realistic at the same time. This story is based on the story of a girl of Afghanistan, who of course, has had her and her family names changed to protect everyone. This book has come back into our knowledge due to recent events in the country. Worries that […]



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