Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A well-rounded portrait of a rock icon

Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren

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Janis Joplin has been the subject of a number of biographies. She is an irresistible topic after all. A rising star, a trailblazer for women in rock whose passion and emotion were evident in every song she sang, she lived hard and died young. Janis performed at Monterey and Woodstock, palled around with other musical greats of the ‘60s and died of a heroin overdose while at the height of her artistic powers. Hers is a story of triumph and tragedy combined. In this biography, […]

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

Maria Longworth Storer: From Music and Art to Popes and Presidents by Constance J. Moore and Nancy M. Broermann

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As a native Cincinnatian, I am familiar with the name Longworth and that family’s connection to local history. Maria Longworth Storer was the founder of and one of the creators at the world renowned Rookwood Pottery. This new biography of Maria Longworth Storer opened my eyes not just to this formidable woman’s business acumen, artistic sensibility and philanthropy, which were already well known and documented, but also to her religious and political views and ambitions. Maria Longworth Storer came from a wealthy society family, but […]

We Are Family

The House of Broken Angels: A Novel by Luis Alberto Urrea

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The House of Broken Angels is the story of two days and of a lifetime. It’s a beautiful novel about family; about pain, sorrow, and regret; about love, forgiveness, and perseverance. The de la Cruz family is gathering for two momentous events: the funeral of Mama America and the 70th birthday of Big Angel, Mama’s oldest son and patriarch of the extended de la Cruz clan. Yet, as everyone knows, this will be Big Angel’s last birthday; cancer has wracked his body and he has […]

Iranian immigrant experience, part 2

The Stationery Shop: Novel by Marjan Kamali

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My last review was The Saffron Kitchen, a novel set in modern London and in Iran in the 1950s and ‘60s, a novel about interrupted love and political upheaval. The Stationery Shop is a similar type of novel, set in 1953 Tehran and the modern US and also featuring interrupted love and political upheaval. While The Saffron Kitchen alludes to political developments in Iran, its main focus is on the trauma these events have caused its main character and her relationship with the love interest […]

Important reminder that refugees don’t WANT to leave their homes

The Saffron Kitchen: A Novel by Yasmin Crowther

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I found this on summer vacation at an independent bookstore at Rehoboth Beach (Browseabout Books). It was a staff pick, and as I had had luck with previous staff picks from this store (Mudbound), I invested in this novel. And I am not disappointed. Published in 2006, The Saffron Kitchen is a beautiful, heartbreaking, entirely realistic story about Iran and England, mothers and daughters, the desire to be free and the pull of home and the past. Yasmin Crowther, the daughter of an English father […]

Shining Light on Colonialism

Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gappah

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Dr. David Livingstone died in May of 1873 in a village called Chitambo (in present day Zambia), located in central Africa. His African attendants buried his heart there, embalmed his body, and then transported it along with his papers over 1500 miles to Zanzibar so that they could be returned to England. The journey took 200+ days and two of the men on the trip Susi and Chuma gave a short account of it, mentioning illness and deaths within the travel party and other dangers […]



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