Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I Still Don’t Quite Get It

British Politics: A Very Short Introduction by Tony Wright

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Best for: People who understand how British government should work in theory but want to know how it works in practice. It’s like British government 201. In a nutshell: Former Member of Parliament provides a very basic (though not basic enough for me) understanding of how the UK government works. Worth quoting: “Britain is rare among democratic states (only Israel and New Zealand belong to the same category) in not having a book of constitutional rules.” Why I chose it: I was looking for British […]

Don’t Say We Didn’t Try

Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe by Rebecca Erbelding

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Due to extensive documentation in all manner of media, World War II is an enduring object of fascination. Just when we think we’ve heard everything, the inexhaustible well comes up with something new. In my favored stories of resistance, espionage, politicking, and propaganda, the Holocaust—Nazi Germany’s systematic genocide of Jews in occupied Europe—is impossible to avoid. (Yes, other minority groups were targeted, too. This book is not about them.) It’s a favorite pastime among WWII buffs to finger people, besides the Germans, who ought to […]

Two Joe Cantrell books that maybe blended together in my head?

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And so it Begins… cbr10bingo So although I’m using this book as my “And so it begins” spot on cbr10 bingo, because it’s the first book in a series, I of course didn’t read it first.  I read the second book in the series (reviewed below) first.  I don’t what is wrong with me, but it happens like allll the time!  Anyway, I’m going to review mostly the characters in these two books because they’re jumbling together in my brain (even though I just finished […]

Untold Stories Unearthed

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Politics in any form is hard for me. I avoid confrontation and disagreement like the plague, so almost everything to do with politics makes me go running for the nearest blanket to hide under. But one of my Political Science students brought me a book catalog from a trip she went on, and The President’s Kitchen Cabinet was in it. I love food and anything to do with it, and looking at the history of politics through the lens of a thing I enjoy made this […]

I always feel like a chump for having zero magical powers when clearly the world is full of magicians and superpowered beings!

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The Everything Box is superfun! I added it to my library queue after some happy Cannonball Read reviews, and am so glad I did. I read almost this entire book in one sitting. I would best describe this as Neil Gaiman Lite, which is NOT a criticism. There is a richness missing that would make it a full Gaiman experience, but sometimes you don’t need the bone marrow spread on top of the rib-eye on top of cheesy polenta. Sometimes you just want a salad […]

Fear and Paranoia in Burma

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This book was a random acquisition and comes with a bit of backstory. I was reporting in Mandalay, central Burma, on a number of stories, and one of them required me to interview a comedy troupe that is known for staging vaudevillian shows that harpoons the country’s authoritarian regime. Now that Burma is considered a democracy, this comedy troupe is still putting up nightly shows for tourists, making fun of the fact that the current government is really a puppet for the military. One of […]



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