Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Love Letter to Our Little Lords and Masters.

First in Fly: Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery by Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr

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I think Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr has done us all a great service by writing this book. As a drosophilist myself (or in more common parlance, a fly-pusher) I understand completely why Drosophila is such a great model organism to work for genetics. It’s a damned shame though that this understanding has not really trickled down to the rest of the population, who just don’t get it the way we do. Mention that you’re being paid by the government to study flies, and people look at […]

I’m a dick, I’m addicted to you

Lights All Night Long by Lydia Fitzpatrick

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Bingo Update: Lights All Night Long counts as my Listicle square, since it was on our list of picks for my workplace book club. It also is the reason I went to my first book club meeting here! Lights All Night Long is a multi-timeline story of two Russian brothers, the prodigy and the fuck up. Ilya is our prodigy, a young man with immense talent for English and education and therefore a world of possibilities spread before him. Vladimir is his older brother, less […]

Cause baby now we got bad blood

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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OMG this book annoyed me so much!  The writing was great, and it was so well investigated, but the characters drove me bonkers!  To think that they’re all real people makes me even madder.  I borrowed this book from my library back in the winter.  I got about fifty pages in and was just so frustrated with it that I ran out of time and didn’t get to finish before someone else placed a hold.  Then I kinda forgot about it for a while.  Once […]

“Therapy is like a toothbrush. You can’t really put it to use for anybody but yourself”

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

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#CBR11 Bingo: Reader’s Choice (in place of Back to School) (would also work for a Pajiba or Listicle square, as well as Summer Read) Eveleth “Evvie” (rhymes with ‘chevy’) Drake has packed the car and is about to leave her husband when she gets a phone call that he’s been in a car accident. Before she can make it to the hospital, he is dead. About a year later, everyone thinks Evvie has kept to herself, isolated in her big house, because she’s overcome with grief. She […]

Michelle Obama is my hero

Becoming by Michelle Obama

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I have loved Michelle Obama for years and Becoming just scratched this itch.  This woman! Hard working, humble, gracious, driven, smart, caring and full of so much integrity.  She almost makes me want to be American (and then I remember the health care issues and hug my Canadian passport like a security blanket).  Had Hillary Clinton won the last election I might have read Obama’s memoir in a different light- inspiring yes, but in a world where inspiring things were still relatively common.  Since the […]

Maybe the coolest, mind-trippiest, concept I’ve ever encountered in a book.

S by JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst

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CBR11 Bingo – Listicle   If you look this book up on Goodreads, it ends up on several of their book lists, including “Best Experimental Books Ever”, “Books With Innovative Designs”, and “Books You Can’t Read On A Kindle”. All of these categories hint at the unique design concept which makes this book the amazing piece of work that it is (and with JJ Abrams (yes, that one) as the co-creator, it’s not a shock). The story is about Jen, a university undergrad who works […]



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