Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Wealth is just security. Luxury is living care free.”

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater

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4.5 stars CBR17 Bingo: Culture (A lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds, countries and cultures are forced together for a time during World War II) Official plot summary: January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles. Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her […]

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 […]

Around the World Around the World

Night Prayers by Santiago Gamboa

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Very mixed feelings on Night Prayers. Ultimately, it’s one of the best things I’ve read in 2025. It’s also one of the more frustrating. Gamboa writes in the style of his Latin American contemporaries such as Bolaño and Marquez. And for the most part, he does it well. This is a style I always enjoy sampling, even if it can frustrate me at times with its tangents and magic realism. I quit the book several times in the beginning but was inexorably drawn back to it and […]

The World Gone Mad

Our Man in Tokyo: An American Ambassador and the Countdown to Pearl Harbor by Steve Kemper

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The attack on Pearl Harbor was shocking and unexpected to the American public and government, but for Joseph C Grew, the American ambassador to Japan, it was the only logical outcome to a decade’s worth of missed opportunities for peace. For all the many times we rehashed World War Two in school, I never learned much about what led Japan to side with the Axis, and why they seemingly so suddenly launched into war with the United States – Pearl Harbor always arrived as a […]

All The Hard Times Are Coming

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  “Looking out at the ice-cold water all around me I can’t feel any traces of that other place” –Vampire Weekend, “Diplomat’s Son” Less than a year ago, The New Yorker published Ronan Farrow’s article “From Aggressive Overtures To Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories.” It propelled the young journalist, son of Mia Farrow, into the spotlight, which wasn’t the point; Farrow insisted that the stage belonged to the brave women who had been willing to risk their careers, and more, to tell their stories. […]

Army Chief of Staff Reading List #5

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Here’s another one from the Chief of Staff reading list.  As always, I read it now because it became available.  There’s a lesson here too.  If you put a hold on a dozen or so books at once, several will probably become available at the same time.  Then you have to listen or read fast.  I’m usually a 1.5x guy but I’ve listened to the last few at 2.0x.  It’s great while working out but it can be awkward when you’re doing dishes.  Lesson learned. […]



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