Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

How the World Works

Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy by Matthew Campbell & Kit Chellel

The Constant Gardener by John Le Carré

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Finished two consecutive books on how the world works. Both are good and devastating in their own respective ways Dead in the Water: A True Story of Hijacking, Murder, and a Global Maritime Conspiracy When the cargo ship Dalit hit Baltimore’s Key Bridge last year, I felt it deeply, not just because I’m a Baltimorean but because I’ve worked with seafarers in the past. It’s a hard life: dangerous labor with little pay and almost no labor protections. Away from your family months at a […]

Scandal Magnet, Pioneering Aviatrix, and Maverick – Beryl Markham

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A beryl is a precious stone. It is rough until cut and polished when its beauty turns it into an aquamarine, or an emerald or the flawless golden heliodor. A beryl is rare and coveted. Beryl Markham was a wild thing created by Africa. She walked like a leopard and lived life with no boundaries. She was a maverick. A pioneer. Which during the early part of the twentieth century was a rare and golden thing. The wikipedia entry on her is dry and lifeless but the historical fiction, […]

This is not actually a book about birds.

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Well this was a surprisingly delightful little book. Mr. Malik is a “short, round, balding brown man”–a sixty-something widower with a comb-over.  After his wife’s death, on his doctor’s advice, he picked up a hobby: birds.  Every Tuesday morning, he joins the East African Ornithological Society bird walk,  led by Rose Mbikwa, Scottish widow of a Nairobi politician.  Mr. Malik most definitely has a (quiet) crush on Ms. Mbikwa. One Tuesday, the showy and good-looking Harry Khan, Mr. Malik’s former classmate, shows up at the bird walk. […]

Petals of Blood: Feminism in Post-Colonial Kenya

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Another installment of ModernLove takes an African Lit class! This was one of the earlier books we read over the course of the…course, and it’s one that while I reading it, I didn’t like, but once I was done and able to look back at the story as a whole, I really appreciated. The story takes place in Kenya just after it’s liberation from British rule. It’s set mostly in a small village, and the four main characters are not natives of it. They’ve found […]



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