Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

If you don’t love science yet, Sam Kean will win you over

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Drama, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean

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CBR12 BINGO: Gateway Sam Kean is my favorite science writer, and his books don’t get any better than The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons. I’ve previously reviewed The Disappearing Spoon and Caesar’s Last Breath for CBR, but I decided to re-read The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons because it’s a perfect “gateway” book into both Kean’s work and popular science. Plus, I’ve had a hankering lately to read some brain stuff. The title refers to a pair of doctors who tended to King Henri II of France after […]

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

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CBR12Bingo – White Whale This might be the whalest of my white whale books. Heck, even as far as White Whales go, I have read Moby Dick a handful of times, and while it’s scattered, it’s completely readable to me. So this one though is all over the place. So while I have read this now, there’s a near infinite number of bits scattered all over my brain. To think of it as a complete text feels wrong, in the sense of reading it as […]

“Any effective solution to eradicating American racism must involve Americans committed to anti-racist policies” – CBR12Bingo “How to”

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

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This book fits the “How to” square by teaching me how to be a better anti-racist.  It is not enough to be against racism, one must be actively anti-racist, which is different.  I am a white woman and in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, came to realize that I was woefully under educated about the problem of racism in America.  At the time all sorts of recommended reading lists came out and Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas […]

I’m not 100% sure of everything I read but I loved every second of it

On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

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On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son, named Little Dog, to his illiterate mother. The majority of the letter deals with Little Dog coming to terms with and making sense of his life and the lives of his mother and grandmother. He tells his memory of events from childhood all the way through college graduation. The letter is an attempt for him, a gay, college-educated, young man to bridge the gap between who he is and his family, specifically his mother, […]

The Muppets Did it Better

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

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As Tropical Storm Isaias took out our power, and one of my quarantine goals is to actually read books I own instead of buying more, I thought it appropriate to read this children’s classic that’s been sitting on my shelf for years. Like many of my books, I have no idea where this copy came from, which partially lead to its appeal. And even though I loved “Muppet Treasure Island” so much, I broke the VHS back in the 90s, I’d never read the source […]

Keep with the New Fun magic Falcons or Stick with the Plan?

The Tethered Mage by Melissa Caruso

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Bingo Review 15: Fresh Start I’ve kind of had my eye on The Tethered Mage, Book One of the Swords and Fire trilogy, and using it for the starting a new series square worked out just fine. Looking at the cover I actually just noticed that one of my favorite fantasy writers, Genvieve Cogman, approved of it too; I don’t always have great luck with things authors I like like, but maybe this is an exception. I should also admit that by the end I […]



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