Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

She blinded me with science

Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey Through the World's Strangest Brains by Helen Thomson

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My Science pick for Bingo could easily be my I Love It selection, because behavioral science in all its forms is my jam. I think I’ve included the line “I was hoping for an Oliver Sacks version of topic X” in approximately half of my non fiction reviews and each time been disappointed, but this more or less hit the mark.  I mean, I love you Helen Thomson, but you’re not quite Oliver Sacks, but getting as close as you did to filling his shoes […]

This book is cute. Wombats are way cuter.

The Secret World of Wombats by Jackie French

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CBR11bingo: I LOVE THIS What do I love? Wombats! To be fair, I’m partial to animals in general. I even try to coexist peacefully with centipedes, in spite of them giving me massive heebie jeebies. But wombats belong to that incredible group of mammals known as marsupials, of which I’m something of an aficionado. As my friends and more than a few disinterested strangers know, I volunteer on the weekends as a docent at the Los Angeles Zoo, where I not only educate the public […]

The most enjoyable book I’ve read so far this year

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

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#CBR11 Bingo: I Love This First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations. The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between […]

Far and Away

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

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The depths of the Pacific Ocean, native home to many of the octopuses that we encounter in the aquarium profiled by Sy Montgomery in this book, is about as alien an environment as I can imagine while still being on the same planet.  Montgomery doesn’t restrict herself to the octopuses in the tanks in her exploration of aquatic life, and goes scuba diving to see the cephalopods and their dens in the wild. Montgomery is an interesting author for exploring another world as she does […]

OK, but Y is he called Yorick?*

Y: The Last Man, Vol 1: Unmanned by Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, and Jose Marzan, Jr

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Bingo Square: Illustrated In July 2002, a worldwide catastrophe happens. All living beings with a Y chromosome simultaneously die. Except for one young man named Yorick Brown, and his Capuchin monkey. In an instant the world has shifted, and women are left picking up the pieces. Some are trying to do so through governing, others, known as the Amazons, are more violent. When the latter discover Yorick’s existence they go after him, wanting to remove all trace of men from existence. His sister, Hero** is […]

Well, it didn’t scare me off MY wedding

Strangers and Cousins by Leah Hager Cohen

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I’m calling Strangers and Cousins a “summer read” because it’s largely about a family gathering for a wedding and that feels like a quintessential beach read to me. I’m getting married this fall and am already kind of dreading the unavoidable deluge of distant relatives, so it also felt a little personal, up until the point I started reading it. Cohen may have been better served had she pared things down a bit. There’s a wedding AND the town is in crisis AND the parents may […]



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