Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Worth it for the illustrations alone, but there is SO MUCH more here.

This Book Will Make You Kinder: An Empathy Handbook by Henry James Garrett

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Embarking on reading This Book Will Make You Kinder I knew extraordinarily little. I could not say I was familiar with its author and illustrator, Henry James Garrett although his visual work is what he is most known for. I had spotted ASKReview’s review (which must be how it ended up on my to read list), but that was pretty much it. But at some point this winter, I plunked it on my library requests list without too much thought other than, I could, in […]

“It’s not unlike filtration, a move that blatant, deliberate. “

Sleep Donation by Karen Russell

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In the near-future, we lucky Americans are eyeball-deep in a new terror: we can’t sleep. Every day, thousands more become unable to reach REM. They die after days of restlessness. The only thing that can help? Donations of sleep from “healthy” dreamers. Not unlike a blood drive, people like Trish Edgewater are cold-calling sleepers, begging them to give some of their life to the lifeless. Etiquette is a powerful programming, however, and easily exploitable. I sneeze. He sneezes back language at me, reflexive generosity: “Bless […]

Books Help Keep Kids’ Hearts Open in Fearful Times

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I teach an ethics class for little kids on Sunday mornings. It’s a small group and the kids don’t come every Sunday, because lives are complicated. The group ranges in age from 3 to 9, so it can be a challenge to find things that hold their interest.

I Wonder About Wonder

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My book club picked Wonder for this month of January and I decided to be a good book club member (for once) and actually read the book I’m supposed to, rather than the books that I want to read.  I read the entire thing in almost one sitting which means that I was avoiding something else in my life (grading and laundry, I stopped to play with some Shopkins and a certain blond 5 year old who wanted me to hang with her). I Wonder […]

Don’t just keep it simple, make it understandable, and make me care

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When Alan Alda speaks to doctors about communicating with their patients, he doesn’t start off by saying “When you talk to a patient, try not to use jargon.”  Instead, he tells them a story about his appendix operation. When Alda was in Chile filming a documentary, he suffered a life-threatening problem with his appendix.  He needed an end-to-end anastomosis.  This meant a yard of Alda’s intestine had to be cut out.  Before surgery, his operating doctor told him that something had gone wrong with Alda’s […]

Advice on Love and Life

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This compilation of advice columns was recommended to me by my 25-year-old daughter, the same daughter who introduced me to Cannonball Read and whose taste in literature I admire 99% of the time. Not a devotee of the chicken soup series, I was—to put it mildly–reticent to read something subtitled “Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar.” But after reading one question to “Sugar” and her reply, I was totally hooked. “Sugar” is the name taken by Cheryl Strayed, best-selling author of the memoir […]



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