Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Not as good as I hoped

To Drink and to Eat, Volume 2 by Guillaume Long

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When I request a book from NetGalley, I have high hopes that I will enjoy it. I have loved graphic novels that are cookbooks or food centric memoirs. I think communicating about food lends itself to illustration. Cartoonist Guillaume Long writes a culinary comic for Le Monde, “To Drink and To Eat.” While I wasn’t familiar with him, he is apparently well loved. Unfortunately, Long got on the wrong foot with me by writing a jokey little story with recipe about Paul Gauguin moving to […]

A Mother-Daughter Thing

The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers by Bridgett M. Davis

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I found this book on a list of unusual true crime reads. I suppose on some level this can be classified as a “true crime” book. Illegal gambling is a crime and I guess Fannie Davis was technically a criminal if you’re going by the letter of the law. But this is really more than that. It’s a story about a daughter’s relationship with her mother, how it evolved over the years, how her mother embraced her unusual profession and used it to make a […]

History of several kinds

The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty

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I have to admit up front that I did not completely finish The Cooking Gene; I had it from the library and ran out of renewals before I had to return it. This is not a fast read if you want to really get the content and the feeling. I don’t mean that the style is hard to read; on the contrary, it’s written in a pretty conversational way. What made it slower for me was the depth of what was being presented. This came […]

Two books I never read in high school

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Night by Elie Wiesel

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 November has been a sucky month in a sucky year, and on a recent trip back east for a family situation, I found that the collection of science fiction stories I brought with me for distraction just wasn’t cutting it. Unable to focus, I did the only sane thing and decided to binge-watch seasons 2 and 3 of The Office. After Michael Scott restored the humors in my brain, I raided my sister’s bookcase, where I found a number of books that have been languishing […]

To Do And Do Not

A Promised Land by President Barack Obama

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It’s tough to put aside my feelings on President Barack Obama and his politics and just rate this on its merits alone but I’ll try. I feel like I was capable of doing so with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s What Happened, though Obama obtains far more space in my imagination, having served as President and having been the most historic one of my lifetime. This isn’t as candid as HRC’s book but it’s candid enough. Obama starts from his childhood years, goes quickly through his early time […]

Not all rainbows in these celebrity memoirs

We're Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union

Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) by Rosie Perez

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I read We’re Going to Need More Wine by Gabrielle Union for my last in-person Mocha Girls Read meeting in March. This memoir is a collection of moments that are mostly linear with some flashbacks. Unlike Becoming, the chapters are not as detailed about her early childhood. The book is all about keeping it real and reflecting on her past with levity. We learn about her family and how she at a young age she looked after herself. With no supervision, Gabrielle got up to some […]



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