Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

To boldly go where no (wo)man has gone before!

The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush

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CBR 15 Bingo – Strange Worlds: The titular six (and I) jet off to the strange worlds of NASA and outer space in this book. It was many years after the inception of NASA and the space flight program that women were allowed to become astronauts. Though not all of these initial six women are household names today, they all worked to advance both space exploration and women’s rights in their own ways. It rather surprises me that I’m not very interested in space exploration – […]

I want to tell your story, the way it really happened.

Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

Maus II : And Here My Troubles Began, Maus. A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman

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CBR15 BINGO (Picture This square: Maus I, Graphic novel) BINGO! – Strange World to Picture This CBR15 BINGO (History square: Maus II, Holocaust, Auschwitz) BINGO! – South America to History BINGO! – History to Europe I have to confess the only time that I read graphic novels is once a year for a bingo square. I was never a big comics person and I tend to equate the two (don’t come for me, I know that they aren’t necessarily the same) but do enjoy the ones that I have read. Not sure what is […]

Our Man in Ghana

Anansi's Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo

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Read as part of CBR15Bingo: Africa. This non-fiction story centers around the country of Ghana, which is part of Africa. I didn’t know much about Ghana before picking this one up. Great soccer squad, often the nemesis of the United States Men’s Team. West African location. I had always assumed that the slave trade had ravaged their country but I didn’t know who were the worst perpetrators (the British, who also robbed them of their gold, though they were not alone w/r/t slavery). Fortunately, one […]

August 2023 Leftovers

Red Cat by Peter Spiegelman

You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy

Gangland by Chuck Hogan

Death and the Good Life by Richard Hugo

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington by Alexa Coe

Britt-Marie Was Here by Frederik Backman

Occupied City by David Peace

Sleepless City by Reed Farrel Coleman

Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum

Run Time by Cathy Ryan Howard

Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline

None Of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

The Club by Ellery Lloyd

Not in Bronxville by Rita K. Farrelly

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Unquestionably the worst month in the calendar. Red Cat*** It’s not the writer’s fault that I just finished Robert Kolker’s excellent Lost Girls in light of the apprehension of the man they think is the Gilgo Beach murderer. But my threshold for murdered sex workers was low going into this. I only finished it because it filled a specific square for my library summer reading game. It’s not bad; the mystery is done well but it doesn’t stand out as far as the rest of […]

Life and Death in the Asylum

Broadmoor Inmates by Nicola Sly

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CBR 15 Bingo – Violence: On their path to the asylum, nearly all of the people profiled in this book committed violence to others, and many to themselves as well. Broadmoor is a well-known psychiatric hospital that originally opened in 1863, but until the 1950s or so, the “criminally insane” people sent there were mostly there for confinement rather than effective treatment. I’ve always enjoyed true crime, but having also recently become intrigued by attitudes toward mental illness throughout history, I was excited to have this […]

What Are We?

Culture: The Story of Us by Martin Puchner

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This was another library impulse grab in my mission to read more non-fiction and I’m glad I made it through! Using key moments and figures, Martin Puchner lays out a brief sketch of human culture over the millennia. Which, you know, huge task! He focuses on times of cultural exchange, whether willing or not, and how we are constantly borrowing, assimilating, and rediscovering who we are. The examples he chooses are diverse and not just the frogmarch of Western Civ that would have us believe […]



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