Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

American Like Me, American Like You

American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures by America Ferrera (editor)

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Badkittyuno reviewed this one and I immediately put it on my to read, and then picked it up at my first chance from Audible. American Like Me is a collection of 32 stories about what being American, whether they call themselves American enthusiastically, reluctantly, or not at all. Some of the authors have written previously, others have not, but America Ferrera gathered a wide variety of voices to capture a breadth of experiences. This book is full of the stories about life between cultures. The […]

Get Out of My Head, Guy!

My Life as a Goddess, a memoir through (un)popular culture by Guy Branum

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I got this as an audiobook, as I almost always do when reading a celebrity memoir, especially if it’s a comic. If you are going to read this book I recommend the audiobook. So I spent a good 90% of this book thinking, “I know, right??!!” It is almost creepy how much Guy Branum and I think alike. He grew up in a town about an hour away from where I grew up and he’s only about 4 or so years older, which I think […]

We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control

Educated by Tara Westover

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In the middle of rural Idaho, born and raised At the junkyard is where she spends all of her days Sorting out scrap and following Mormon rules And avoiding government institutions like hospitals and schools It looks like she’s in for a life of abuse Then her world gets flip-flopped upside down When she gets into college out of town Although a Fresh Prince riff feels a little glib for the often dark parts of Tara Westover’s memoir, at base her story shares some similarities- […]

“We should teach our girls that snapping is ok, instead of waiting for someone else to break them.”

Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

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I only learned that Laurie Halse Anderson wrote her modern classic and much challenged novel Speak in response to her own rape as a young teen. But where Melinda came to art to find her voice, Anderson came to writing. Anderson writes in verse that runs the gambit of emotion and holds no punches.  It is a memoir of her full life, opening with a reflection on her father, whose severe PTSD sets the tone for her complicated home (later reflected in her YA fiction The […]

Evolution is a fickle bitch

I'm Just a Person by Tig Notaro

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I  set out to learn about Tig Notaro when she appeared on Star Trek: Discovery as the dry, hyper-confident engineer Jet Reno. I love this character so much that I went down the Tig Notaro rabbit hole and discovered she does not disappoint, and is possibly the only person worthy of depicting Jet Reno. I chose to do the audiobook version of her memoir, in part because I love her dry-Daria like delivery and wish I could truly perfect my like-I-give-a-fuck-about-emoting-monotone like she has. If […]

“…a duty, out of sheer cussedness, not to disappear completely, simply to ease the conscience of the rest.”

Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey

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I thought this was going to be a depressing read that I trudged through because it was short and I sometimes feel obligated to bear witness to others’ pain. That was not at all the case. This book is gorgeous. It’s poetic and absolutely beautiful. There’s a recurring metaphor for suicidal thoughts that it just incredible. It’s funny and sad and really, really, really beautiful. It wasn’t that I didn’t think someone with a debilitating illness (in Lyndsey’s case, she has an extreme sensitivity to […]



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