Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Star of Stage and Screen, Behind the Scenes

Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris

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Mark Harris wrote two of the best books about movies that I’ve ever read (Pictures at a Revolution and Five Came Back) so I always knew I would eventually make my way to his third book, a biography of the prolific director Mike Nichols. Mike Nichols: A Life is a comprehensive account of Nichols’s varied professional life, starting with his legendary improv double act with Elaine May and progressing through his incredible success as a theater director on Broadway and his eventual successes in Hollywood. […]

August 2022 Leftovers

Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood by Jane Leavy

Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Man Who Liked to Look at Himself by K.C. Constantine

The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott

Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris

Inside the Empire: The True Power Behind the New York Yankees by Bob Klapisch and Pete Solotaroff

Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Finley Ball: How Two Outsiders Turned the Oakland As into a Dynasty and Changed Baseball Forever by Nancy Finley

Sea Change by Robert B. Parker

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

Ms. Tree, Volume 1 by Max Alan Collins

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Some extra books I read in August. What a miserably hot month… Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood**** Less a conventional biopic on The Mick and more a look at his life vis-a-vis his legend and the backdrop of postwar America. Not as thorough as I would’ve liked but still riveting given how Jane Leavy presents her subject.   Greenwich Park*** Again glad I slept on my review. I really liked how this started but after a while, it morphed into […]

Just in Time for Oscars Night!

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris

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Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood tells the story of the five films nominated for Best Picture of 1967 at that year’s Academy Awards: Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Dolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. This book was recommended on a recent episode of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast, so I decided to check it out, despite the fact that I had only seen one of the […]

War on Film

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Five Came Back is a look into the wartime experiences of five famous film-makers who took major hiatuses in the middle of their careers to lend their talents to the American war effort during World War II. While their contributions and their exposure to danger varied significantly, each of the five men, Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, and George Stevens made sacrifices and had experiences that would forever alter their films and their lives. It’s a compelling story, which may explain why […]

This Book Just Tried to be TOO Much

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In 2008, before my time taking part in the Cannonball Read, I read and loved Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. For those that are interested, that book covers the 1967 Best Picture Oscar race, cataloguing how that year’s nominated films – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, and Bonnie and Clyde each highlight the changes both in Hollywood and in the culture. I suggest it wholeheartedly. When I […]



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