Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Beyond the Wall

Berlin Game by Len Deighton

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My wife and I honeymooned in Berlin. A lot of folks are surprised by this but we’re not beach people. We like to explore histories, interesting cultural icons, the unusual. Berlin was perfect for that. We had a great nine days there and it was a good start to our marriage. Berlin is sort of a Frankenstein’s monster of a city: a pastiche of prewar romanticism, total ruin, capitalist-western occupation and totalitarian communist occupation make up a sort of fascinating urban landscape. It is doing […]

Just when you think you know everything…

The Girl From Guernica by Karen Robards

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I don’t recall why any longer, but the other day something sent me down a Kindle rabbit hole search for a specific Karen Robards book. There was a point in time when Ms. Robards was an automatic purchase for me – if I saw a new book on the rack at the grocery store or at Barnes & Noble, in the basket it went. Like many authors from the late 90s and early aughts for which I had this habit, she kind of fell off […]

The gal who moved wooden mice

Cut!: How Lotte Reiniger and a Pair of Scissors Revolutionized Animation by C. E. Winters

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From Kirkus review: The creator of the world’s oldest surviving full-length animated film is celebrated in this straightforward biograph I am all for women in history and biographies for kids about women, but when you get the same handful over and over, you get bored. Or at least I do. And then when I find a person that is not like the others, that is in a new area or did something fantastic, and was not the same old, I tend to get terribly excited […]

The Road to Hell

Hitler: 1889-1936, Hubris by Ian Kershaw

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Read this as part of CBR15Bingo: Europe. Adolf Hitler’s entire life story takes place in Europe and he, more than any one person, instigated a world war that began in Europe. Many times, Europe is considered a fancy, civilized place and I think we need to own how historically, western Europe has given the world a horrifying amount of barbarism between colonization, the transatlantic slave trade, and the Holocaust.  While far from an expert on Nazi Germany, I perhaps know more about it than the typical […]

Stuck or unstuck in time

Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade: The Graphic Novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr and Ryan North

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WTH did I read? I admit, a lot of the graphic novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade, went over my head. But that just means I need to read it again as this is not something  that can be taken in all at once. The artwork is what really grabbed me this first reading. There was a lot going on, but it did not always feel “fleshed out” and there were things missing, yet, there was also too much going on as well. The lack […]

To the Bitter End

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner

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Those who have followed my reviews for a while know that I’m no fan of Donald Trump. At the same time, one large online annoyance during his presidency was the constant intonation of “resistance” on social media. Resistance by posting hashtags and memes. Resistance by someone who worked in his office, proud of themselves for not carrying out his more convoluted orders but still doing enough to hurt the body politic. I blame this fascination with Resistance! on our understand of World War II. Yes, […]



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