Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Pioneer Woman

Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson

The Paper Daughters of Chinatown by Heather B. Moore

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Frontier Grit – 3.5 stars In this book we meet twelve women who traversed the American frontier in search of their dreams, though what these dreams were and the paths they took to them vary extraordinarily. As a child I devoured Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. Though I’ve have quite a lot of bubbles burst about her depiction of her childhood (check out Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires to learn more), my interest in those so-called pioneers who tried to ‘tame’ the Wild West still persists, […]

America is our gal!

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Douglas Wood has created a very idealistic look at America and Americans. What is presented is what we were told this country is about: freedom, differences, agreeing to disagree. There is not even “oh sometimes we disagree so much we decide to kill each other like in the news shows us.” It does mention that we are human and sometimes we make mistakes.  It speaks of the Fourth of July, the Bill of Rights and other things that does make America unique. It does show […]

There May Be No Supernatural Shenanigans, but That Doesn’t Make the Real History Less Engrossing.

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A few weeks ago, something shocking occurred when I went to check my credits on Audible. Usually, their recommended section either accidentally recommends books I’ve already read, or throws me some kind of self-help book – which, honestly, they probably inflict these on everybody. But this time they got it right – they gave me a recommendation off their new release list that wasn’t something I was already familiar with. And it turned out to be really damned good! I wasn’t sure of how to […]

Everything is awful

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Fresh from finding Dr Livingstone in the Congo, newspaperman Henry Stanley sensed an opportunity and so, in 1877, returned to the Congo to travel through its interior and map its giant river. Despite the mouth to the river having been discovered by Portuguese explorers in the 15th century, until then no outsiders had ever attempted to travel further than the coast. Following the initial routes laid out by the slavers who virtually decimated its coastal communities, Stanley accomplished his mission, opening the interior up to […]

Who What When Where Why and How…..

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Who Was Mark Twain? He was an author, adventurer, tall-tale maker and the subject of this book by April Jones Prince. There are several different people in the Who Was/Who Is series. I read Mark Twain and Who Was Joan of Arc by Pam Pollack and Meg Belviso last night. While each has its own author(s) each are illustrated by a different artist (John O’Brien and Andrew Thomson respectively). They are a non-fiction story about their subject. You can have everyone from Joan of Arc […]

Stripping away the air of glamour to reveal gangsters who were actually pretty crap at robbing banks

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Go Down Together was bought immediately after I read and loved Jeff Guinn’s The Road to Jonestown, and was no disappointment. Prior to reading this, I knew the very basics about the pair – Depression era gangsters and snappy dressers, who went down together in a hail of bullets. After reading this, I feel I know the pair rather intimately – and was rather surprised to have some of the more popular myths about them demolished. Both hailing from incredibly poverty stricken backgrounds – the […]



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