Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Doo doo, doo doo doo doo!

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

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Did anyone else sing the title of this book to the tune of Baby Shark? No? Just me then. Despite my knowledge of kid-friendly ear worms, I do not actually have any kids. This book essentially validated that decision as it told the story of Hannah. She is seven years old and non-verbal but otherwise very intelligent. She’s the absolute apple of her father’s eye and she loves her father even more. However, her mother Suzette, who spends all day at home with Hannah homeschooling […]

Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives.

Emma by Jane Austen

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Jane Austen famously described Emma as “A heroine whom no-one but myself will much like.” and I might agree. Emma Woodhouse is a rich young woman in a society where not much happens. She entertains herself by fancying herself a match maker and she takes on a protegé, of lower social ranking, intending on making her a match. Her friend Mr. Knightley warns her of this endeavour, but Emma is headstrong and believes a little too much in her self to listen to advice from […]

Two very different novels from a very English author

The Tenth Man by Graham Greene

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

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Graham Greene was a prolific English writer who, in addition to writing over 25 novels, wrote movie treatments and screenplays. Probably his most famous adaptation was for the Orson Welles classic The Third Man, based on Greene’s own novella of the same name. The author conceived of The Tenth Man in the 1940s while working for MGM, but nothing happened with the draft for 40 years. When MGM sold the rights in 1983, the buyer allowed Greene to revise and publish the novel, giving us […]

Life is Hard: A Sermon (with a soupçon of Fix-My-Husband)

I'm Fine and Neither Are You by Camille Pagán

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When I became too old for Sunday School, I had to learn to sit through sermons. At first I doodled hearts and flowers on the church bulletin. When I was too old for that, I turned my attention to analyzing the sermon. Depending on the preacher, I waited for Freudian slips, clichés, logical fallacies (“no true Scotsman”), and flights of magical thinking—flaws I found quite amusing. Yet the quickest way to lose my interest and respect was to traffic in the soggy old object lesson.  […]

“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story.”

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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Daisy Jones and the Six is another recent Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, and so far, my track record has been pretty decent with Reese’s picks. Imagine if all of the members of Fleetwood Mac – as well as their producers, spouses, accountants, and friends — sat down and talked to a journalist, providing an oral history of everything that had ever happened to them. Imagine the amount of drugs and sex and backstabbing and inter-band politics that would be mixed in with brilliant songwriting […]

“See her name: Lady Sorrowfree, happiness winning over bitterness, no regrets in this world.”

The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan

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In the Chinese tale of the Kitchen God, a man named Zhang, who owes his wealth and success to the efforts of his wife Guo, grows tired of her and throws her aside for another woman. When he falls on hard times and becomes destitute, fate puts him back with Guo, but his shame leads to his death. In the afterlife, he is rewarded for his remorse by being made the Kitchen God, a sort of spy, susceptible to bribery, who bestows luck upon individuals. […]



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