Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Buddy Rich once told me that he was the loneliest man in the universe.”

The Torment of Buddy Rich: A Biography by John Minahan

Traps, The Drum Wonder: The Life of Buddy Rich by Mel Torme

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CBR14Bingo: Minds (I read both of these as I continued my personal psychological study of Buddy Rich’s mind) Buddy Rich is arguably the best drummer to ever live. I was first introduced to his work about a year ago when he was mentioned in a biography of Frank Sinatra I was reading; the two of them had at least one fistfight when they were in Tommy Dorsey’s band together. As I have a fascination with mid-century men with terrible tempers (Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster) I […]

The sword fighting is more interesting than the romance but not the point

Fence: Disarmed by Sarah Rees Brennan

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Bingo 20: Star I think I mostly like the comics better; the novels for Fence, including Fence: Disarmed, get too wrapped up in the personal drama. At least Fence: Disarmed fits the star square; part of the premise of the whole series is that Nicholas, the new(est) kid at King’s Row boarding school, wants to become a star fencer to impress his supposed father Robert Coste who is a major figure in the sport. Part of the problem though is that Robert may have no […]

An old-fashioned book, and I mean that in the best possible way

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins

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CBR14 BINGO: Heart, because I received this book from my hubby for our anniversary, and also because it was the inspiration for a movie I absolutely love. Long before I ever owned a home, much less thought about remodeling one, I loved the movie Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, my two favorite actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. When my husband and I began pursuing the idea of doing major renovations on our house about five years ago, the movie […]

The first step to letting go is not feeling obligated to finish a crap book

Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty

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CBR14 BINGO: Mind, because this book is about training your mind to “think like a monk.” Also, my mind was greatly relieved when I decided I didn’t need to finish it. I went into this book with complete sincerity. I’d been feeling extremely stressed and caught up in too many pointless non-problems, so when I remembered we had a copy of Think Like a Monk, I thought my problems were over! I even vowed to read carefully, not rushing through in an effort to finish […]

Ice Ice Baby

The Ice Coven by Max Seeck

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Read as part of CBR14Bingo “cold” for multiple reasons: it has “ice” in the title, the cover is a woman standing on a frozen body of water outside of an island covered in snow, and it’s set in Finland in November. All of this shouts: cold cold cold! This is why book bingos are great. I picked up this book in a Target of all places because I read good things about the author. But knowing it was the second in a series, and seeing […]

Look for the Bare Necessities! Classic storytelling, talking animals, and a scoop of racism.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

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CBR 14 BINGO: Snake, because snakes figure into multiple stories in this book (Kaa the snake in Mowgli’s stories, and Nag & Nagaina in “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”) The Jungle Book has got to be the classic “Love it AND Hate it” book. On the one hand you get classic storytelling by a Nobel-prize winning author and talking animals. On the other hand, you get to feel uncomfortable in a way that only a 19th-Century white man born under the British Raj in India can make you feel. […]



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