Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Word ‘Turbulent’ Is Bearing a Lot of Weight Here

Bomb Season in Jakarta: A personal account of a turbulent period in Australian diplomacy by Grant Dooley

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This is yet another book I’ve discovered via listening to ABC’s Conversations.  The subtitle of Bomb Season in Jakarta is A personal account of a turbulent period in Australian diplomacy, and Grant Dooley is not kidding when he writes this. Back in 2004, Dooley and his family had moved to Indonesia to start a three year stint working at the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. This was a few years after the 1999 East Timorese crisis and only two years after the 2002 Bali Bombings, Indonesia’s […]

Moving Beyond the “Great” Men

The Problem with Great Men by Hallie Rubenhold

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A couple of weeks ago an essay that Hallie Rubenhold had presented for the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2020 as part of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Lecture came to my attention, and I slid it into the TBR. The Problem with Great Men hits on so many of the things that are bothering me professionally these days and reminds me why I got into the work of public history in the first place.   Rubenhold lays out how nearly 200 years ago (1840 to be exact) essayist Thomas Carlyle gave his lecture series “On Heroes […]

I Knew I’d Seen This Movie Before!

The Skin of Dreams by Raymond Queneau

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cbr17bingo  Play Written in 1944 by French surrealist author Queneau, this is the story of a man, Jacques, who lives in, as the cover blurb says, waking dreams.  He seamlessly transitions from chatting with his friends to imagining himself in a certain situation, and then back to everyday life.  I was about a quarter of the way through when I realized that I had seen this movie before.  And sure enough, in the afterword, the author reveals that he was highly influenced by the James […]

1930s Cinema History

Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema; 1930-1934 by Thomas Doherty

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Are you looking for a primer on how the enforcement of what became known as the Hayes Code on the movie business in the 1930s impacted what came before and after 1934? I might have the book for you. In 1999 Thomas Doherty published what might be considered the go to book on early 1930s Hollywood, deep diving the various social forces at work and how they effected the creative output of the artists (and businesspeople) in Hollywood.   The Code was adopted in 1930 but was without any enforcement measures. By 1934, however, the enforcement was […]

I still don’t understand how you get “Jet” from “Margaret.” CBRBINGO – ‘N’

Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson

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This was a bit of a disappointment for me, but I still had an overall good time with it. I don’t understand why Holly Jackson keeps writing books about Americans when she is very British. (Nothing of hers has hit for me like A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.) There was also a key moment at the end of the book that was totally dumb and out of character, which I’m deducting 0.25 stars for. But the mystery was very well plotted and intricate, and […]

Yep, just cats and games. CBRBINGO – Play

Cat + Gamer, Vol. 1 by Wataru Nadatani

Cat + Gamer, Vol. 2 by Wataru Nadatani

Cat + Gamer, Vol. 3 by Wataru Nadatani

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Firstly, big thanks to vega-table for the heads up that this even exists! I was having trouble finding a book that would work for this BINGO square, and this was just so perfect, because it’s short and easy to read, and it’s about cats. My library system actually has quite a bit of manga in it’s catalog, and that’s how I read most of the manga I have read. Luckily they had this one, too, and it was free! God bless libraries and librarians. Protect […]



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