Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Memory and trauma and loss and family

Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey

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Memorial Drive, by Natasha Trethewey, is a memoir where Trethewey tells the stories of her childhood homes, growing up as a child of a black mother and white father, the shift in her relationship to her mother, and, eventually, her mother’s murder while Trethewey was still a young woman. This is the core of the book, but it really is so much more than that. A relatively short read, Memorial Drive is captivating and visceral. At its length, I would have expected to read the […]

Our pets’ HEADS are falling off!

Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh

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In 2013, it looked like Allie Brosh had disappeared off the face of the Earth, or at least the face of the internet. In reality, she was (of course, duh) still around, but she was in the midst of a years-long struggle to grieve and get a handle on her health, both physically and mentally. During all the years she was gone, I did periodically wonder what was going on with her. I know I wasn’t alone. Her blog, Hyperbole & a Half, was wildly […]

Talk it out

Group by Christie Tate

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Christie Tate is a 40-something southern-born, Chicago-based lawyer and writer.  Group is a memoir of her adult years, heavily focused on the group therapy she began attending while in law school. We get some background on Tate’s psychological issues (eating disorder, attachment issues, etc.), as well as significant details of her love life that she shares with the members of her two therapy groups. Its an interesting and quick read, and gives a lot of detail into how group therapy works- no secrets, either within […]

I guess I just don’t get the “narrative in verse” sensibility.

SHOUT by Laurie Halse Anderson

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This three (and a half) star rating is entirely personal preference. I just would prefer that this book was in prose instead of verse. I would nearly always prefer a work be in verse if it is possible. Obviously if your aim is to write poems, individually crafted ones with like, a poetic aim or whatever (I have no idea why poets do what they do) that’s not gonna work. But here, this is a memoir, and while there were several “poems” that worked as […]

Go ‘Neers

The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley Eisenberg

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It’s important to note right off the bat that The Third Rainbow Girl is not a true crime tale in a conventional sense. It’s not In Cold Blood or I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. If you’re looking for a plucky sleuth to solve the crime and tell us *what it all means*, then keep looking. Instead, the book functions as an exploration of many things: of Appalachian culture in rural West Virginia, of class and gender, of human sexuality, of memory and the persistence of time. They don’t all […]

Deadly! (It’s a good thing)

Top End Girl by Miranda Tapsell

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Miranda Tapsell is a proud Larrakia and Tiwi woman from Australia’s Northern Territory, growing up in Darwin and the small town of Jabiru in the Kakadu National Park.  Her memoir is fairly light and breezy, but doesn’t shy away from the complexities of being a biracial Indigenous woman in a country and industry with a lot to learn about treating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures with the respect they deserve. Miranda always loved to perform, but it wasn’t until Arrerente and Arabana […]



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