Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Who Wants to Be the Next Caliph?

American Caliph by Shahan Mufti

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Simmering political, religious, and racial tensions combine and erupt in three sieges led by the same strange Muslim group around Washington, DC after a years-long lead-up. I’m new to Washington DC, and still learning my way around the place as a city where people actually work and live divorced from the role that it plays in the United States’s government and politics. Part of that process has been learning more about the city’s history. Like with many things about DC, I had never heard of […]

Adventures, Both Realistic and Fantastical

The Book of Road and Kingdoms by Richard Fidler

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Richard Fidler’s Conversations on ABC Radio has been a reliable source of book recommendations in the past. His own writing makes for a some excellent reads as well. His main area of interest is the rise and fall of long ago civilizations –  I have previously reviewed Ghost Empire, whose focus was Constantinople and the Byzantium. This time his focus is Central Asia, and the travelers that crossed the region during Islam’s Golden Age. The Book of Road and Kingdoms is also the name of […]

One pill makes you larger / And one pill makes you small / And the ones that mother gives you / Don’t do anything at all

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson

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Okay, the title of this book is just a hint of what the book is going to cover.  And the title of the book is a lot, which make sense because this book is often a lot. Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson covers exactly what the title suggests. As a general note and content warning, this book contains extensive discussions of drug addiction and self-harm. One section, in particular, was especially disturbing, prompting […]

Early Fall Leftovers

To Start A War: How the Bush Administration Took Us Into Iraq by Robert Draper

The Travelers by Chris Pavone

A Walk Among the Tombstones by Lawrence Block

Dark Fire by CJ Sansom

The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation by Robert Rand

Stasi Child by David Young

The Cover Wife by Dan Fesperman

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison

Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich

Geiger by Gustaf Skördeman

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

The Devil Knows You're Dead by Lawrence Block

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I’ve read some interesting stuff lately and I wish I had made more time to document it but life gets in the way that life sometimes does. Not all bad, just life. To Start A War**** I had a long thing here about connecting this to the 2024 election but I don’t want to talk current electoral politics on here, at least the specifics of them. A good book if you want to know the intelligence (ha) perspective of how we wound up in a […]

The Strange, Fragile, Beautiful World

Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures by Katherine Rundell

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It’s estimated that there are around 7.8 millions animal species on the planet, many of which we know little about. Unfortunately, some may vanish before we can learn much more – which is a pity, because the variety of life on this planet is far more wondrous and strange than anything our imaginations could conjure up. This is a quiet and contemplative peek at the natural world in easy bite-sized installments. Each essay discusses an animal species which threatened in one way or another, covering […]

“a human looking glass: the light cast by fame bounced off her, and back on to those facing her” CBRBINGO – Golden

Q: A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown

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Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ARC. It hasn’t affected the contents of my review. I’m so glad I took a chance on this one and requested the ARC. It was so much fun! It avoided literally everything that usually makes me avoid reading biographies: the tedious linear structure, the grandiloquence and navel-gazing that comes with writing about a much-lauded (or controversial) figure (and the author trying to “earn it”), and to be honest, the dull bits. Q: A Voyage Around the Queen is not […]



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