Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Also I just watched Girls Trip for the first time and it was pretty great.

The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish

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This was a pretty good listen. There were parts during the first third or so where I was actually laughing out loud, and I don’t do that very much. Mostly it’s just inward laughter or maybe a small noise of some sort to indicate my own amusement to myself. She was cracking me up, though (definitely do the audio if you’re going to do it at all; the swamp tour story alone is worth it). But then a single chapter had to go and ruin […]

I’m never drinking out of a hotel minibar glass again

Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky

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I stay in hotels a lot.  Often for only one night at a time.  I recent traveled back to the UK  and for a one week trip to visit family, whom I stay with, I have to stay in 3 different hotels (2 of them airport hotels).  I’m fascinated by the way hotels work, how rooms are allocated and so on.  Why in some hotels when I return to my room mid afternoon has it still not been cleaned?  I’m often checking in super late […]

Bringing colour and life to a childhood under apartheid

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

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In the world of celebrity memoirs, this book is a gem.  Although Noah gives us bits and pieces of how he got from the ‘hoods of Johannesburg to replacing Jon Stewart on the Daily Show (ie: being the funny guy to avoid being an outcast), his book is really about growing up mixed race under apartheid in South Africa.  The stories are sometimes almost too wild to believe (he was pushed from a moving car to escape a potential murder or assault, the domestic violence described […]

She Doesn’t Owe Us Her Story, I’m Glad She Chose to Tell It.

Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot

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 I heard an interview with the author of this book just before it was published and knew from that interview I wanted to read this book. I am really glad I did. It is extremely raw and brutal but so powerful and real. Mailhot does not give two shits if you like her or not and thank god she doesn’t because the truth of the story is what makes it amazing. The book is basically a stream of consciousness letter to her white boyfriend, the […]

Summer in the Sea Section

Calipso by David Sedaris

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 David Sedaris is one of my favorite authors and this book was just the thing I needed after the more serious books I’ve read recently.   If you know Sedaris’s work then you kind of know what to expect. It’s memoir in short story format. This collection focuses mostly around the beach house he and his partner Hugh purchase on the Carolina coast in the same town his family used to take summer vacations. This gives a lose through line to the book, which mostly […]

Hotel Confidential

Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky

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Do you have a thankless job where you are expected to maintain complete and utter composure at all times, deal with difficult clients/customers, find yourself on the brink of alcoholism, work too many hours, and have a host of ridiculous stories about the shit you’ve dealt with? Jacob Tomsky does, and if you do too, then this book may just be the salve you’ve been waiting for. Despite being an arts worker, I’ve managed to avoid working in the hospitality industry to supplement my income, […]



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