Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A mixed bag, but in the end it won me over

Believe Me: a memoir of love, death, and jazz chickens by Eddie Izzard

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Another shout-out for the little free libraries of Burbank, CA! This book is a roller coaster, if your idea of a roller coaster starts out as insanely boring with bits of really interesting insight and a few chuckles along the way that leaves you with more questions than answers. I realize that is not a resounding endorsement, but I’m giving this book  3 stars because in spite of many flaws I found it rather inspiring. I’m going to be kind of hard on it though, […]

“I’ma wade through the waters. Tell the tide ‘don’t move'”

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors

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This book was a very difficult but necessary read. It belongs in college curricula and book clubs. Your racist family members should read it but never will, though you can get a couple of fact bombs from the book to drop in the middle of an awkward Thanksgiving dinner. This memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors will give a deeper understanding of the often fraught nature of modern Black life in America and firsthand account of the #blacklivesmatter movement. One of the most significant activist groups of […]

When Princess Leia and 45 White Men inspire you to write an art book.

Limitless: 24 Remarkable American Women of Vision, Grit and Guts by Leah Tinari

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Limitless: 24 Remarkable American Women of Vision, Grit and Guts by Leah Tinari is one of those books that I want to give a score of 100 to, but at the same time, a score of zero. There is a lot going on in these handful of pages. The high score is because Tinari has picked several women that I have never heard of. And, would almost guarantee the “average” person has not either. Yet, each woman has had a powerful impact on the world […]

Winston Churchill was a real one

Hero of the Empire by Candice Millard

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  I should start this review by saying that I knew next to nothing about Winston Churchill before reading this book. I knew even less about the Boer War. That being said, Winston Churchill was a real badass. Other good descriptors would be, “arrogant”, “obnoxious”, “tenacious”, and “remarkably lucky”. He contained multitudes. This book profiles Churchill’s life during early war campaigns and through the end of the Boer War. He was interested in war not because of the righteousness of the cause but because he […]

Presidential…or How to Not Be like Donald Trump

Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

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So I am a moron. I had no idea there were two other books before this one. I felt like I got plopped into Theodore Roosevelt’s life and felt confused. Once I realized that I was on the third book I felt better since I was all, why is the book acting as if I read about Theodore Roosevelt before now? I have to say though that my attention kept straying away while reading this. I thought that Morris does a good job of bringing […]

the argument is, we are excluded from the argument

Tracker by Alexis Wright

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Tracker Tilmouth was a member of the Stolen Generation – his older, lighter-skinned siblings were taken away from their parents and sent to white families in the south, while he and two younger brothers were taken away to a mission more than a thousand kilometres further north. Tracker’s ties to both northern and central Aboriginal communities stayed with him his whole life, and were one of these reasons he became such an influential figure in the struggle for Aboriginal civil rights.   Tracker’s life story would […]



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