Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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 […]

Surprisingly Dull Bones

The Bone Lady: Life as a Forensic Anthropologist by Mary Manhein

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When I was young, one of my dreamed-of professions was to be an archeologist. I have no propensity for science nor any patience, so needless to say that dream went unfulfilled. But I have remained fascinated by the subject, from digs to dinosaurs to graves. This interest led me to pick up The Bone Lady by Mary Manhein, a surprisingly dull book about her work as a forensic anthropologist. Manhein runs a lab in Louisiana and was given the nickname “The Bone Lady” by colleagues. […]

“Promise and potential:” Overlooked Vocational School Students in China

Class Work: Vocational Schools and China's Urban Youth by T.E. Woronov

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Stanford University Press was having an 80% off summer sale, which was an amazing deal, so I got a bunch of books that I otherwise would never have thought to purchase since academic press prices are usually prohibitively high. Class Work is the first of the batch that I’ve read, and it was a good start. This is a slim volume that packs a lot of information about the Chinese school system and the impact of testing and government efforts to make or re-mold class structures. […]

The Gift of The Gifts of Imperfection

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown

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“Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.” This is one of those books I wish I had as a young girl. Perhaps I wouldn’t have picked up on all of the intricacies and layers then that are understandable only with development and years of self-discovery; however, this may have helped to lay a […]

“A Table of Alphabetical Hard Words”: Our First English Dictionary

The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

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Quite a bit has changed since this book was written; language has changed, attitudes towards language have changed, and culture overall has changed. Some pieces from this book have not aged well; it’s rather dismissive of some languages and cultures (weirdly judgmental over Japanese writing, for example) while being aggressively defensive of others. There is also little-to-no attention paid  to the many additions given to English by marginalized communities; I was surprised to come across very little about the contributions of people of color have […]

Men Are Terrible and Cannot Be Trusted

Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss

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Ghost Wall is a story about Sylvie, a seventeen year old girl, dragged along on an Iron Age reenactment in northern England with her father, Bill. Bill’s enthusiasm for the Iron Age is a hobby; he isn’t traditionally educated in the subject, and jumps at the opportunity to join Professor Jim Slade and his students for what is essentially a two-week summer LARP. He brings his wife, Alison, and his daughter, Sylvie, along for the ride. It becomes obvious early in the novel that Bill […]



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