Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Right book, right time.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

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Right book, right time. I sat down with Maybe You Should Talk to Someone first thing Saturday morning, and late Sunday morning I finished it. I really didn’t mean to finish it so fast, but I would put it down for a break and then my fingers would reach for it on their own, and I just kept reading. This book is half memoir, recalling Gottlieb’s time in therapy following a painful and unexpected breakup, and half non-fiction, recounting several of Gottlieb’s own therapy patients […]

Many of you read this years ago and I am only now catching up.

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes

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Just a feel good read, talking all about one of my favorite movies. I did the audio version, and it was great fun not only having Cary Elwes read it himself, but for the parts that were “oral histories” from his fellow cast and crew members, many of them read as well (Billy Crystal, Carol Kane, Rob Reiner, Chris Sarandon, Christopher Guest). I already knew quite a bit of behind the scenes information because I went through a period about 10-15 years ago where I […]

Another five star review for this wonderful graphic memoir.

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

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Note: We reached back to CBR12 to feature this review of Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. This year there is a renewed push to restrict access to books that reference race, gender, and sexuality. Kobabe wrote and illustrated an op-ed in the Washington Post on the need for queer kids to have access to queer books. In addition, eir was a guest on the Washington Post podcast, Please Go On. I have a lot that I want to say about this memoir, but I can’t figure out how to […]

“Write everything down.”

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

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This was my first Nora Ephron book, and likely my last. [If this isn’t a good representation let me know and I’ll certainly revisit!] This is a collection written in the early 2000s, far enough past 9/11 that it’s enjoyably light and perhaps too far from the present that some of the lines are a little…dated? I don’t know. She lived in a different world than I ever have or will – fancy NYC apartments with five-digit monthly rents, East versus West Manhattan sunlight woes, door […]

I should have probably read this at Christmas

Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas by Adam Kay

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The obligatory Christmas tie-in to Kay’s This Is Going To Hurt, Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas covers the many Christmases that Kay worked for the NHS, with all the humour and heartache that one would expect. It’s an extremely quick read too – you could finish it in the time it took you to eat a Christmas dinner – which would fit perfectly into a stocking (remember this for, erm, nine months time I guess). Being an obstetrics/maternity specialist, babies who refuse to wait till […]

Girl Interrupted

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

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As someone who has been both correctly diagnosed and misdiagnosed with conditions concerning my brain, I was really interested in Susannah Cahalan’s story once I heard about it (I’m also just a weird disease junkie in general). Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is a terrifying thing — one of those autoimmune disorders where the body just goes into attack mode on itself for unknown reasons. It results in a cascade of symptoms, starting from something that looks like the flu to a range of major behavior disturbances […]



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