Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sit up and take note

Thick and Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

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Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic (Sociologist) who also writes for the New York Times and has appeared on The Daily Show. Thick was published in 2019 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. It is a collection of essays on race, gender, politics and culture that are meticulously researched and brilliantly argued. This is the kind of collection that bears taking your time to read. McMillan Cottom gives the reader a lot to think about and made me rethink things I thought […]

Pearl Divers Unite! Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States

Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States by Pete Jordan

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I started a dishwashing job late last year, and it’s been one of my favorite jobs. I was curious to see what Pete Jordan liked about dishwashing so much that he decided to do it in all fifty states. The book is written as part travelogue, part memoir, with some history of labor movements along the way. Pete’s writing comes alive when he’s describing the working-class struggle and triumph. The best chapter of the book is in New Orleans and Pete learns that restaurants there […]

“You could call T. Rex the James Dean of dinosaurs: it lived fast and died young.”

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte

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This, friends, is a dinosaur. I believe Pesto’s ancestors would be confused by him, but that’s the beauty of nature. It’s super weird and always doing unexpected things. This book manages to impart a lot of information about the evolution, time on earth, and extinction of (most) dinosaurs while at the same time being very readable and fun to consume. At one point the author uses the phrase “crow-sized weirdos with wings on their arms and legs” to describe a species of dinosaur that differed […]

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine!

Upworthy Good People: Stories From the Best of Humanity by Gabriel Reilich, Lucia Knell

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I’ve had this book for a few months and now felt like the exact right time to read it. It would make a lovely holiday gift for someone on your list or for yourself. Upworthy is a popular contributor on social media, featuring stories of kindness submitted by the public. This volume, published by National Geographic, is a compilation of those stories divided into six chapters. The stories are mostly short — from a paragraph to 2-3 pages — but every one of them is […]

“I want – I want – I want – was all that she could think about – but just what this real want was she did not know.”

Carson McCullers: A Life by Mary V. Dearborn

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CBR16 Bingo: Pride – McCullers and many people in her life were queer, one of the main struggles of her life was trying to come to terms with and better understand that queer identity, which also infused her writing. Carson McCullers is one of the most acclaimed authors of the Southern Gothic genre, but she was also a complicated woman with a messy personal life who constantly strove toward goals that, though she did not reach always reach them, created beautiful things along the way. […]

“Now did you think it all through? All these things will catch up to you…” (Double bingo)

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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Nowhere Book Bingo: From a genre you’ve never read (true crime) CBR16 Bingo: Fiasco (Theranos was a massive fraud and a fiasco) I’ve owned this book since 2020 and am pretty sure I picked it up in an e-book sale because of the many Cannonball reviews I’ve read about it over the years. Not being particularly interested in the tech world or medical science, and certainly, not someone who reads a lot of business news, I didn’t really hear about this case as it was […]



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