Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

To the Bitter End

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner

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Those who have followed my reviews for a while know that I’m no fan of Donald Trump. At the same time, one large online annoyance during his presidency was the constant intonation of “resistance” on social media. Resistance by posting hashtags and memes. Resistance by someone who worked in his office, proud of themselves for not carrying out his more convoluted orders but still doing enough to hurt the body politic. I blame this fascination with Resistance! on our understand of World War II. Yes, […]

Around the world in 72 days – and more than that

19th Century Female Explorers by Caroline Roope

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CBR 15 Bingo – In the Wild: The women of this book ventured into the wild spaces of pretty much very continent at some point or another. In the heyday of European colonialism, social mores were constrained for women, who were expected to stay domestic and tend hearth and home. Despite this, many European women managed to go traveling around the world on just as exciting adventures as their males counterparts did, and often recorded what they saw with clearer eyes as well. Truth is […]

‘since the play has gone down well, give us a clap/ and send us away with applause’

Emperor of Rome by Mary Beard

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CBR15 Bingo – Politics: This book examines the performance and politics of being the emperor of the Roman Empire. Many people can name an emperor of the Roman Empire even more than two thousand years after they lived, and are familiar with the stories of the excesses of their power. But what did being emperor actually entail? In this book, historian Mary Beard argues that being emperor in many ways meant playing the part of ’emperor,’ in the way that the Roman people saw them […]

Nanorrobots Prodigiosos?

Virus. La guerra de los mil millones de años by Juan José Gómez Cadenas; Juan Botas

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So for my European bingo spot, I’m going to review a science book about humanity’s tangles with viruses that eventually builds to the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Virus. La guerra de los mil millones de años‘ (‘Virus. The war of a billion years’) is a bit of a curiosity for me: this book about viruses, diseases, and pandemics, which was written with a Spanish perspective in mind, was completed during the very first few months of the pandemic. The authors state in the introduction that the writing […]

To Bomb Atomically

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin

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One of my all-time favorite movies is The Hunt for Red October. I can never get over one of those opening scenes where the Red October’s political officer is reading from a book owned by ship captain Marko Raimius, played by Sean Connery. The officer reads the line “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.” I still recall their exchange, with Connery doing his parts in his typical gravelly patrician tone: Connery: It was said by an American. PO: American? Connery: Mmmhmm. He invented the atomic […]

“I may of use to you yet, my dear dragon”

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

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4.5 stars CBR15 Bingo: History (set in an alternate history, in the Victorian era) 15-word review: Introverted lady scholar goes to fictional Iceland to research faeries, followed by her handsome colleague. Official book description (because I finished this at the start of May): Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is […]



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