Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

If you don’t love science yet, Sam Kean will win you over

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Drama, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean

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CBR12 BINGO: Gateway Sam Kean is my favorite science writer, and his books don’t get any better than The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons. I’ve previously reviewed The Disappearing Spoon and Caesar’s Last Breath for CBR, but I decided to re-read The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons because it’s a perfect “gateway” book into both Kean’s work and popular science. Plus, I’ve had a hankering lately to read some brain stuff. The title refers to a pair of doctors who tended to King Henri II of France after […]

People swallow lies easily provided they are big enough

Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

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CBR12 BINGO: Yellow I’ve been in the mood to revisit Watchmen since I saw the extraordinary HBO series earlier this year (best television in recent memory, btw). Then references to the comic book series popped up in Eleanor & Park, and it gave me an extra push to reread the graphic novel that I first encountered when I was in college. Plus. . . .can’t get more yellow than that cover, can you? I wanted to see whether this classic holds up after 34 years, […]

Just what I needed to cure the pandemic blues

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

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CBR12 BINGO: Book Club Under normal circumstances, I’d be spending a good chunk of my Saturdays volunteering at the zoo. Obviously, that isn’t happening right now, because pandemic. One consequence of that is I haven’t been able to see much of the other volunteers that I frequently spend my Saturdays with, except for a couple of Zoom meetings. I made a casual suggestion that we could form a book club; one person got excited and ran with it, and we ended up with a small […]

My First Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

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CBR12 BINGO: Nostalgia? For the Nostalgia BINGO square, I googled “books set in the 80s” and Eleanor & Park came up. Having seen many positive reviews for Rainbow Rowell on CBR, I decided to get it from my local library (hooray for curbside pickup!). Young Adult isn’t my usual genre. While I always appreciate good storytelling and can admire an author’s attempts to create characters that are relatable to teens, I rarely love a young adult novel. I can enjoy YA, but I’m not often […]

Historical true crime, plus something for the Hamilton Fans

Duel with the Devil by Paul Collins

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CBR12 BINGO: Shelfie “Gentlemen of the jury, I’m curious, bear with me Are you aware that we’re making hist’y? This is the first murder trial of our brand-new nation.” If you’re a Hamilfan, you might recognize those words from the song “Non-Stop,” in which Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr act as co-counsel for the defense on a murder trial. In Duel with the Devil, Paul Collins tells the story of that historical court case and the gruesome event that led to it. As I mentioned […]

Liz Climo is the cartoonist the world needs!

Please Don't Eat Me by Liz Climo

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CBR12 BINGO: Friendship Liz Climo is probably my favorite working cartoonist. Her drawings of “odd couple” animals and their relationships are unmitigated joy, what my 29-year-old niece describes as “wholesome” (followed by the sobbing eyes emoji, reserved for things so pure she just can’t stand it). If you’re not familiar with Climo’s artwork, then congratulations, you lucky duck, because you are about to experience happiness like you haven’t felt in months! Her characters are usually critters that you might not typically think of as “going together,” like […]



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