Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Up on the Mountain, There Are No Morals

The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest by Mark Synnott

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In search of the body of Sandy Irvine and the solution to the mystery of whether he and George Mallory ever made it to the summit, the author and his team climb Mt Everest during one of the deadliest seasons ever. I am not sure why I am drawn to stories about Mt Everest. Certainly I mean to never climb it, and I can’t quite empathize with those who are drawn to it, even if I can understand it sometimes. And books like this underscore […]

Up in the Air

Fly Girl by Ann Hood

The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched a Workplace Revolution at 30,000 Feet by Nell McShane Wulfhart

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I got approved for two books about flight attendants one right after another on NetGalley – so all of you must cope with a themed double post from me. Fly Girl – 3.5 stars Ann Hood became a flight attendant at TWA in 1978 and worked there for many years. In this book, she recounts the places she saw and the people she met, and how the shifting culture of air travel at the time affected her and her job. I do like to travel, […]

January 2022 Leftovers

Hit Parade by Lawrence Block

Sex Criminals, Volume 1: One Weird Trick by Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky

Devils In Exile by Chuck Hogan

Ex Machina, The Deluxe Edition: Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

Munich by Robert Harris

Shella by Andrew Vachss

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler

The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz

No One Will Miss Her by Kat Rosenfeld

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

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My resolution for Cannonball Read in 2022 is to only write reviews where I feel like I have much to say and then dump the others in a singular post at the end of the month to track how much I’ve read. This’ll spare me from writing 250+ words about books that I can’t even think of a hundred for. So… Hit Parade **** I enjoy these books and while this is the one I maybe enjoyed the least (did EVERY story need cutaway conversations with […]

‘Western Australia had missed roll-call, but would be able to attend class in 1901 if John Forrest signed it’s permission slip’

Girt Nation by David Hunt

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  …Western Australia needed a bit of coaxing to enter Federation With Girt Nation, David Hunt’s Unauthorised History of Australia returns, following both Girt and True Girt. Why an ‘unofficial’ history? Probably to shake any potential readers of the misconception that these books are dry, academic tomes, but rather satirical and rather un-sanitized (but no less insightful) takes on Australian history. And what, a non-Australian might ask, is a Girt? Or what is meant by Girt? While the word is not exactly part of common […]

The Original Elizabeth and Mary

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

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Two women, rival queens, rule kingdoms that lie side by side. Over the course of decades, they scheme and intrigue and fight both to keep their crowns and to take away the other’s. One will die peacefully, the other violently, and from their actions a dynasty will come to an end. The Dark Queens follows the lives of Brunhild and Fredegund, who were Frankish queens during the 500s. They had extremely disparate origins, with one starting as a Spanish princess and the other as a palace […]

I hope someday we get a better version of this book.

Seduction: A History from the Enlightenment to the Present by Clement Knox

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Dear God, the self-indulgent heterosexual, masculine arrogance that is evident on the nearly 500 pages of this book is enough to make me want to hurl it across the room. Instead, I finished it (while skimming entire sections as needed, I’m not here to punish myself) because while this book does contain interesting information and occasionally a look at some of the past three centuries’ literary output through the angle of the seduction narrative (thus the two stars I am awarding it) it unfortunately buckles […]



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