Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A peace based on injustice is a treacherous sleep whose waking is death. Your honor lies in waking out of it.”

The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore

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This book was infuriating, but very interesting. If you’re looking to rage-out at the patriarchy, The Woman They Could Not Silence will certainly do the trick. But also, because Elizabeth Packard was a badass who changed things for thousands of people in her lifetime and many more into the future, you get a happyish ending as well to lift you back from your cleansing rage. Elizabeth Packard was committed to an asylum in the 1860s by her husband; because he said she was insane, she was […]

The Dark Corners of the Past

Great Scandals of the Victorians by Debbie Blake

Public Faces, Secret Lives by Wendy L. Rouse

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Great Scandals of the Victorians: Disreputable Stories from the Royal Court to the Stage – 3.5 stars For all that Victorians had a reputation for being straitlaced, they had their fair share of scandals – and some of them ended up having major effects on contemporary society, sometimes even driving forth social changes which still affect us today. I love a good gossip session about people I’ve never met, which is why history is one of my favorite subjects. In this book, we learn about […]

Radicalize your reading through fairy tales

The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales by Hermynia Zur Mühlen, Jack Zipes

Smack-Bam, or The Art of Governing Men: Political Fairy Tales of Édouard Laboulaye by Édouard Laboulaye, Jack Zipes

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales by Juwen Zhang

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If you ask me “What’s the best thing about fairy tales?” my brain will combust. But in this very moment, I’ll say one of the best things is that there are so many forgotten or “undiscovered” tales to enjoy. In an effort to bring some forgotten folklorists to the forefront, fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes (my nerdiest old man crush) and Princeton University Press came together for a new-ish series called Oddly Modern Fairy Tales. Each volume concentrates on a writer or movement in fairy […]

In 2017 Wisconsin cheesemakers produced 704,093,000 pounds of cheddar.

Cheese The Making of a Wisconsin Tradition by Jerry Apps

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Cheese: the Making of a Wisconsin Tradition is an example of what is both good and bad with history writing. On the good side, it’s pretty well-researched and lots of good factual info; on the bad, it’s kind of dry and there’s very little narrative continuity. The opening section is an introduction to the subject, meaning some technical definitions, the author’s personal interest, and brief historical overview. The history starts with farmers settling the areas now called Wisconsin and home-cheesemaking. The transition to dairy farming […]

The Intersection of Love and the Law

You'll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other Than Love by Marcia A. Zug

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In this short history of the legalities of marriage in the United States, Zug takes us through how marriage as an institution has shifted over the centuries and how the many reasons for marrying for something other than love, such money, status, or legal benefits, played its part in that. Coming from a culture where marriage is considered an essential step of adulthood and is still sometimes arranged by one’s parents, I never really thought much about it, or why the legal institution of marriage […]

Dynasty Building in Tudor and Stuart England

A Woman of Influence: The Spectacular Rise of Alice Spencer in Tudor England by Vanessa Wilkie

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Alice Spencer, the youngest daughter of a wealthy farmer, was just another building block in the Spencer dynasty, but the marriage that made her the Countess of Derby was just the start of her spectacular rise through the ranks of Tudor England. This book answered a very important question that’s been bothering me for a very long time: Why did medieval aristocrats splash around so much money on frivolous luxuries? I knew the answer had something to do with amassing power and influence, but it’s […]



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