Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Bringing Life to the Story

The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman

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I’m not usually one to knock people’s tastes in problematic art. Chinatown is my all-time favorite movie and I’d be hard pressed to never watch it again. So it’s tough for me to judge. Which doesn’t mean that automatically immunizes me from criticism. I may be a “You do you” person but I also believe we should be critiquing our tastes at all time and remember that many of them come at a cost. I read Lolita when I was an 18-year old college freshman. I’d like to say […]

Hear the 20s Roar

Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age by Debby Applegate

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This is another book where you really have to be deeply invested in the subject matter to enjoy it. Fortunately, it’s right up my alley. 20s, bootlegging, gangsters, New York City. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. It seems as if there was one running thread that connected gangsters like Arnold Rothstein to politicians like Jimmy Walker to entertainers like the Marx brothers to athletes like Jack Dempsey to the upper crust of Manhattan society, it was sex. Specifically the sex Polly Adler provided in her […]

Becoming – a beacon of hope in dark times

Becoming by Michelle Obama

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There are books one reads for enjoyment, others to intellectually challenge yourself, others for education. This is a book that can fill you with hope and just make you feel better about the world. I knew a bit about Michelle prior to reading this autobiography but after reading it, I had one thought “There really are legitimately good people in politics, who knew?” This is not to say the woman is a saint or a paragon of perfection, she is quite candid about some of […]

The Public World and the Private Domain

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed

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Annette Gordon-Reed uncovers the family history of the Hemingses of Monticello, who are known as the slaves of Thomas Jefferson – though their story encompasses more than that. I knew a bit about Sally Hemings and her relationship with Jefferson, but the author goes beyond this notable person to expand her focus to her entire family. In many ways the Hemingses are remarkable for their blood relationship with Jefferson’s wife Martha and how that affected their treatment, but in others they were just like the thousands […]

Starting off the year with crayons

Crayola A Visual Biography of the World's Most Famous Crayon by Lisa Solomon, Crayola LLC

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Somehow I’ve started the past few years reviewing a non-fiction science-y book; this year the one I started was denser than anticipated and I haven’t finished it yet. Instead, I have Crayola: a Visual Biography of the World’s Most Famous Crayon. This sounded really interesting, but I have to admit I was a disappointed that it was more corporate propaganda than history/biography. In retrospect, that shouldn’t be too surprising given that the company is actually listed as a co-author. There is a little bit of […]

Paranoia! Paranoia! Everybody’s Coming to Get Me!

Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America by William Jacobson

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A few weeks after the, shall we say, contentious 2016 primary, a former friend who I still somewhat interacted with on Facebook (and who was and maybe still is a dyed-in-the-wool Way Too Online Libertarian) started blasting me in the comment section of some post I made. He accused me of supporting weird, horrific stuff that made no sense just because I voted for Hillary Clinton. Not being a patron of the Conservative Reddit Extended Universe, I had no idea what he was referring to. […]



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