Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Two Entirely Different Kinds of Pirates

Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao by Helaine Becker, Ill. Liz Wong

What Isabella Wanted: Isabella Stewart Gardner Builds a Museum by Candace Fleming Ill. Matthew Cordell

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But Fortune cares nothing for your dreams. She takes up your life in her cup and shakes it so hard your teeth rattle in your head and your heart roars like a dragon in your chest. Then she throws the bones onto her table of lacquer and jade. Your fate is sealed. – Helaine Becker, Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao Did I know much about Zheng Yi Sao before I read this? Only that she existed, reigned over the South China Sea […]

“The privilege of living now is that I can seat myself at the master’s table – the table of my white ancestor, a slaveholder – and interpret his world, and he has no say.”

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty

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I think to understand what The Cooking Gene is, you have to have a picture of its author. I’ve known Michael Twitty on Twitter for about a decade, Museum Twitter can be a small space sometimes in the best possible ways. Besides being a hoot to spend time with during political debates, Twitty is also a Culinary Historian focusing on the foodways of Africa, enslaved African Americans, African America and the African and Jewish diasporas. Basically, he’s one of the people you want to talk […]

Books to buy with gift cards: Picture books

Flying High: The Story of Gymnastics Champion Simone by Michelle Meadows

Simon at the Art Museum by Christina Soontornvat

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I would say these two books would be great Holiday presents, and they are, but since it is December 24, they will not make it in time (unless your local independent together bookstore has them). Therefore, when you get your gift cards to that same store, you can go and look for them instead. Flying High: The Story of Gymnastics Champion Simone Biles by Michelle Meadows and Ebony Glenn doing illustrations.  The only reason I am giving this a four and not a five is […]

A Book I Read for Preparation

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I am preparing to interview for a new position at work, and it will be a change of pace for me from one type of museum work (education) to another (collections). The work shares many attributes, but there are definitely some skills and terminology that I haven’t used day to day in about 7 years that I needed to brush up on, which led me back to my books from graduate school, this one in particular. Museums, and their running, is a web of crazy. […]

Expose Complexities, Display the Messy

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I work in museums. Specifically, I work at historic sites, and one of the main types of historic sites is the Historic House Museum (HHM). There are a lot of ways in which HHMs are interesting and important to our cultural heritage, and tons of ways where the traditional methods of running such institutions are just plain bad ideas at this point. The entire cultural sector is down in visitation/consumers, so there are always conversations being had about how to be better, attract more people, […]



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