Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Mediocre White Men

The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren Harding in His Times by Francis Russell

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For the last few years, I’ve had a curiosity about Warren Harding. While he was an unexceptional president, he apparently lived a very…shall we say…interesting social life. He also presided over the Teapot Dome Scandal, probably the biggest political scandal until Watergate, and his death was shrouded in mystery. When I read that James Ellroy once considered writing a fictional DC quartet with this book as a guide…well I had to get my hands on it. Holy crap was this bad. It’s tough to tell […]

Q&A With Dolly Parton

Dolly on Dolly Interviews and Encounters with Dolly Parton by Randy L. Schmidt

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I went to the library with a specific title to pick up but then I saw the book next to it and thought that looked better. I was looking for the Dolly Parton memoir but ended up with Dolly on Dolly: Interviews and Encounters. I don’t regret this. As the title suggests, the majority of the book is transcripts of interviews Dolly Parton has given starting in 1967 and running through 2014. Most come from major publications like Playboy, Rolling Stone, and Ladies Home Journal. […]

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

Gonzo by Hunter S Thompson (edited by Steve Crist & Laila Nabulsi)

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In May 1998, I was handed a copy of Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by my new boyfriend. 22 years later, my love affair with both is still going strong. Thompson’s writing lit my brain up in a way I’d never really experienced before. Savagely funny and incredibly astute, especially when taking aim at the assassins of the American Dream, he even managed to make me understand American politics for a while (although this only ever lasts for as long as I’m […]

More work to be done

The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt by Jill Watts

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt by Jill Watts was our Mocha Girls Read book club selection in June. It became a very timely selection after the horrible death of George Floyd, which shone a brighter light on Black Lives Matter activism in America. As a Black woman, I was suffering from emotional exhaustion during that time. This history book actually helped put so many current things in perspective. We have come a long way, […]

A Writer’s Life

Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson by Robert Polito

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So it turns out that the story of Jim Thompson’s life reads much like a Jim Thompson tale. And like many Jim Thompson tales, it’s really good and sadly tragic. I don’t know how a person can do better at connecting an artist’s life to his work the way Robert Polito does. In covering the events that formed Jim Thompson, Polito brings up ramblings and characters from Thompson’s body of work that obviously influenced the man. Jim Thompson’s one of my all-time favorite writers so […]

You’re famous…just nobody knows it.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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CBR12 BINGO: Orange Square (BINGO! Red to Violet) Nearly four decades after after her death, a young black woman, Henrietta Lacks, captures the imagination of Rebecca Skloot, a sixteen year old budding scientist and writer. After a science class discussion on HeLa cells, and their important contributions to modern medicine, Skloot wanted to know more about the woman whose cancer cells were (and still are) part of many major medical advancements. Who was she? Did she have a family? Do they understand the significant role she plays […]



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