Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Dead As a Doornail

Strange Ways to Die in History by Ben Gazur

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In this book, we are taken on a tour of various bizarre and ironic deaths that people have died over the past several millennia, some with plenty of backstory and some just as vignettes. I am a macabre person – I enjoy true crime, creepy mysteries, high strange events. But sometimes you want to return to the basics, and that for me is weird stories from history. A dash of humor on the side is always appreciated too. As such, this book sounded right up […]

“Our bodies, by their very nature, resist control, a fact that always has felt paradoxically triumphant when I encounter it.”

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke

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Everyone has a butt, and most everyone accords them more thought and meaning than they do many other parts of their body. But why do we pay them so much attention? How have they come to be so fraught with connotation? I remember seeing this book on NetGalley ages back, but forgot that I wanted to read it until I read Travis_J_Smith’s review last week. This proves I have a terrible memory, because who could forget that cover? I’ve been feeling like reading a micro-history […]

When Women Play the Game of Thrones

The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World by Shelley Puhak

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I found out about Queen Brunhild through an old website entitled History Behind Game of Thrones. The article was detailed but it painted Brunhild in a titillating way as a promiscuous intriguer doing all she can to maintain her grip on power. It was supposed to compare to her to the villainous Queen Cersei. I was fascinated with the story and had recently reached out to find it again, only to discover (sadly) that the site folded. Which was doubly disappointing because there was scant enough info […]

There are two types of people in the world: people who like heavy metal, and dicks

A History of Heavy Metal by Andrew O'Neill

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Okay I knew this is right up my alley when I heard that. This is one of the more entertaining audiobooks I have listened to this year. Not only is Andrew O’Neill a very colourful and energetic writer, he’s also an excellent narrator with an almost limitless amount of enthusiasm for the subject at hand. Metalheads are an argumentative lot that love being contrarian and are more than eager to split into separate little sub-cultures at the drop of a hat. They are a broad, […]

Something’s a Bit Fishy

Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller

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This was one of the books that was kindly sent to me by andtheIToldYouSos for Book Exchange last year, and I am rather sorry that I have waited until the last minute to review it—it has been a busy year.  Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life is a biography of a rather complex character I had not come across before, and why she sometimes connected with him. I perhaps should have heard of him […]

Tak Ada Peluru Ajaib / There is No Magic Bullet

Kanker, Biografi Suatu Penyakit by Siddharta Mukherjee; Rahmat Purwono 

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(The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer) It’s now edging onto the last part of the year, and I want to mention my most significant (read: stupid) reading challenge. I had some downtime in Australia earlier this year, and I told myself I was going to try to read something in Indonesian again. That something turned out to be an Indonesian translation of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Or Kanker: Biografi Suatu Penyakit (Cancer: Biography of a Disease). Why this […]



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