Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“After more than a year here, I feel like I’ve seen what I needed to see.”

Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle

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This was a reread, as I’ve been doing a lot this week (going through bookshelves in your childhood home will do that to you). I enjoyed it and will keep it for the collection. I’ve read several of Guy Delisle’s travelogues and always like his point of view on things and the way he portrays his travels. I may not always agree with his conclusions or philosophy, but his clean linework and the way he interacts with the world make these volumes satisfying and thought […]

This elephant didn’t fly but did help save a village

Bandoola: The Great Elephant Rescue by William Grill

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Bandoola: The Great Elephant Rescue has a mixture of styles. I mean, while this is a non-fiction story about James Howard Williams and an elephant name Bandoola, it is also written as a fiction story. There are facts about elephants, what they eat, etc., as well as what is used and done of the teak plantation. The story is a bit controversial as it does depict the fact elephants in Myanmar were used to harvest the teak for sale around the world. It mentions some […]

Of Lice and Men

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

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Nothing endures. Don’t you see, Bonox? That’s what Kipling meant. Not empires, not memories. We remember nothing. Maybe for a year or two. Maybe most of a life, if we live. Maybe. But then we will die, and who will ever understand any of this? And maybe we remember nothing most of all when we put our hands on our hearts and carry on about not forgetting.  On the face of it, the plot of The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about war: […]

Fear and Paranoia in Burma

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This book was a random acquisition and comes with a bit of backstory. I was reporting in Mandalay, central Burma, on a number of stories, and one of them required me to interview a comedy troupe that is known for staging vaudevillian shows that harpoons the country’s authoritarian regime. Now that Burma is considered a democracy, this comedy troupe is still putting up nightly shows for tourists, making fun of the fact that the current government is really a puppet for the military. One of […]

The Lady, in All Her Shades of Grey

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If you need a book that can explain to you the context of Burma’s burgeoning transition to a democracy (or at least a nominal democracy), this book by Bertil Lintner is a good one. Not only is it a relatively short look at the modern history of Burma, now known as Myanmar, Lintner’s profession as a journalist makes this read very easy to digest. As the title of the book suggest, a lot of it concerns Aung San Suu Kyi, and how the people in […]



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