Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Brain Game

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

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Officially I did not finish The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks. This is not because it was bad, but because it was not what I was exactly looking for. While it was technical in nature, the non-technical reader could partake in it without a lot of issues. However, I will admit, there were places where I read every single word of the sentence, knew exactly what each one meant, but still had no idea what […]

Thyme travels

Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin

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As an adult, I found a few areas in Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin that were not “smooth” for me, however, from ages 10 to 14 I would have enjoyed it. You are there with our narrator Thyme (like the clock, with a HY). You worry about fitting in at your new school, you worry about your siblings and your relationships with them, you worry about your old friendships, you are sad and happy, you try to balance your “now and then” and along the […]

The brain can go wrong in some crazy ways

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks

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CBR15 BINGO: Strange Worlds, because these essays take you into the very strange world of the mind BINGO: Strange Worlds, Queer Lives, You Are Here, Asia & Oceania, Picture This When I studied abnormal psychology in college, my favorite parts of the textbook were those little side-blurbs that described specific cases of people afflicted with weird brain conditions. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat reads a lot like those side blurbs. In this book, neurologist Oliver Sacks (of Awakenings fame), describes 24 […]

Harper, have you considered… therapy?

Harper and the Single Dad by Amy Andrews

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After an abrupt breakup with Yarran, Harper fled to London and immersed herself in her career as a surgeon. When she returns to Sydney twelve years later, it almost feels like things between her and Yarran haven’t changed at all – except that Yarran has been married, widowed, and had a young son in that time. I pick up Harlequin romances to read when I am in the mood for a simple, comforting romance, and this book did not fail me in that regard. A […]

Never view being a girl as an obstacle

Virginia Wouldn't Slow Down!: The Unstoppable Dr. Apgar and Her Life-Saving Invention by Carrie A. Pearson

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Virginia Wouldn’t Slow Down!: The Unstoppable Dr. Apgar and Her Life-Saving Invention is another read online via Edelweiss that was mostly there. Carrie A. Pearson’s book was more fleshed out than the other sample I read, and perhaps is one of the best biographies of an unknown person I have read. And of course, I will find a copy when it comes out to fill in the plot points missing. Dr. Virginia Apgar would invent a test that would help doctors evaluate newborns and their health, […]

“We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.”

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

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I was given this book as a birthday present about six years ago by my friend Lindsay and it has been languishing on my shelves ever since. Enter 2020, the Read Harder Challenge, and whatever the fuck else has been going on this year that means I’m reading more from my own shelves than anywhere else. And I’m glad I finally got around to it! This is an over 600 page literary fiction book, but it reads in the way I like my literary fiction […]



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