Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Boldly going where no potential underwear had gone before

Almost Underwear: How a Piece of Cloth Traveled from Kitty Hawk to the Moon and Mars by Jonathan Roth

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History, CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge Who knew that a piece of muslin cloth would have such an adventurous life? Reads as fiction, Almost Underwear: How a Piece of Cloth Traveled from Kitty Hawk to the Moon and Mars by Jonathan Roth is a  non-fiction story that is humorous and educational. Great for a classroom and a way to grab kids’ attention. After all, what kid doesn’t think underwear is amusing? When I first read the title I thought it was going to be about underwear. […]

What would you do?

Shadows on the Ice: The 1972 Andes Disaster by Frédéric Bertocchini, Thierry Diette and Pacal Nino

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History, CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge I am starting this with saying this is, to say the least, not an easy read. There are several situations that could be triggering. The main one is that this is about the 1972 Andes plane crash that would result in the eventual consumption of the deceased passengers. I was not completely ready for what was going to happen (and I felt I was prepared) and therefore I was not comfortable with the subject. Also, I will say that I […]

A.I.: The Good, The Bad, The Monster

The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag

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History, CBR17 Pie Chart Challenge TITLE: The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag REVIEW: It is complex. It is different. It is familiar. It is sad. It is confusing. It is straight forward. It is something you have never read before. It is something you know. You will get something from it and everyone else will get their own thing, but everyone will experience it emotionally. Or not. Just read it already, alright  I cannot  tell you about this book as I am not really 100% […]

The Other Empresses

The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe by Nancy Goldstone

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While Victoria of Great Britain is the most well-known of the empresses who reigned in Europe in the 19th century, she is by no means the only one. While Eugenie of France and Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary did not rule in their own right, they left their own marks on the lands and people over which they reigned too. I read omnivorously, but sometimes one wants to come back to the basics, and for me books about royalty count among the basics. I’m quite familiar with […]

“Thirty years ago, I lay in the room of a woman, conceived in a sexual act of rape, being carried during the prenatal period by an unwilling and rebellious mother, finally bursting from the womb only to be tormented in a family whose members I despised or pitied, and brought into association with people whom I never should have chosen.”

My First Thirty Years by Gertrude Beasley

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What a read. My First Thirty Years is the unvarnished and enraged truth of Gertrude Beasley’s life, and it deserves to be read. From the first line, which I’ve used as the title above, she is telling us to listen and to understand. In a country where a large chunk of the population is trying to revert us back to an idealized past, this is the actual truth of so much of that past. There is no magical historical moment where the nuclear family bubbled […]

Perang Kemerdekaan Indonesia.

Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David van Reybrouck

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After making Majaphait one of the last reads of last years Cannonball Read, I decided to keep with my South East Asian history roll with Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World by David van Reybrouck. As you can see, I’m also continuing with my long standard interest in Australia’s immediate northern neighbor. It just boggles the mind that such a large, diverse country has such a small impact on the public consciousness. I think a lot of this has to do with […]



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