Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Full of Grace

Becoming by Michelle Obama

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I often find very popular books…well, underwhelming.  Why did so many people like this book over that book?  Why does [name of a very popular book] still have 5 stars on Amazon/Goodreads, when it’s so trite/boring/unrealistic/eye-rolly?   What made Oprah pick [one book] over the similar but superior [other book]?  Etc, etc.  I’m sure many of you Cannonballers can relate. However, I am DELIGHTED that this book has library waiting lists and 5 star ratings across the board.  I hope everyone reads it, and comes away […]

Words mean more than what is set down on paper

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of Maya Angelou’s seven autobiographies (cbr12bingo #FreshStart), covering her early childhood up to the age of 16/17.  The memoir is set in 1932- 1944, primarily in Stamps, Arkansas, with a brief interlude in St Louis Missouri, and ending with high school San Francisco. Angelou’s autobiography begins with her parents’ divorce when she is 3 years old and her only sibling, brother Bailey, is 4 years old.  They are sent by train from Long Beach, California, […]

“Shame is a cruel thing. It should rest on the perpetrators …. But they don’t carry it the way victims do.“

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisenger, Steven Scott, Harmony Becker

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Cbr12bingo Shelfie This graphic novel geared toward young readers is an eye opening first hand account of the Takei family’s experience in the US’s Japanese internment camps during WWII. World renowned actor George Takei relates his childhood memories of being uprooted and shipped across the country with his family and reveals his subsequent struggle to come to terms with the injustice and trauma of those years. Even though many of us may have heard about the camps before (thanks in part to the hard work […]

Tales of the Times

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Crosby

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

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I read two books this week, a new one I was excited about and one that I’ve been putting off for three years. Both are good. Blacktop Wasteland This one was pretty hyped. I’ve seen S.A. Crosby’s image everywhere and it was covered review-wise by all the big ticket spots, including The New York Times. I’ve had my eye on Crosby for a while, even though I had yet to read him. A chance encounter at the library helped me nab this one. It absolutely meets the […]

The Intersectional Autobiographical Approach to Understanding Racism

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

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Bingo review 10: Book Club I work at a regional state university. Earlier this summer, we got an email containing a book club invitation that will begin a series of events designed to reflect each of the institution’s official values. Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist was chosen in association with “adaptability”, and probably also in association with the current focus on race and racism in the US. According to the accompanying flyer, this group will meet monthly throughout the fall semester digitally, […]

Who knew ice cream could be so dangerous?

Van Wars: The Real Story of the Brutal Glasgow Ice Cream Van Wars by Teddy Renoc

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If you’ve never heard the story of the Glasgow Ice Cream Van Wars, then you certainly won’t get the full story here. What you will get though is Teddy Rennoc’s version of what happened when he drove one of the vans going up against the competing Marchetti Brothers, and in Teddy’s version the war really was over the rights to sell ice cream, household basics and the odd bit of stolen goods rather than heroin – I suspect the true full story lies somewhere between […]



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