Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Who Wants to Live Forever?

Borrowed Time: The Science of How and Why We Age by Sue Armstrong

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I really wanted to like this one more than I did. After all, it’s a book about (as the subtitle says) how and why we age, and as I’ll be fifty at the end of June it’s a topic that doesn’t exactly weigh on my mind, but does make me curious. Run-on sentence, hoy. Armstrong’s book looks at a great many of the physical processes behind aging (the way our cells tick down moment by moment until they die), the ways people have tried to […]

Shades of grey in Afghanistan, where the truth is elusive

No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal

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Man, I’ve been terrible at this reviewing thing, hey? No better way to get back into it than to just jump straight in. Close to a decade ago, when I was agitating to do “real journalism” I was semi-obsessed with reading books about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I was more concerned about the writers’ inner lives, and yearned to understand how they handled these stressful situations — against the backdrop of devastating American-backed wars. And now, I have little patience for such naval-gazing (Jeffrey […]

“But we know that people are complicated and have a mixture of flaws and talents and sins. So why do we pretend that we don’t?”

So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

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This is one of those books that probably everybody should read. It wasn’t the most brilliantly written book I’ve ever read, but that’s okay, that’s not Ronson’s style. He’s very workmanlike in his writing, sort of tongue-in-cheek, and he’s got this great way of using his simple style to deliver these darkly funny deadpan one-liners. But what I really liked about this was the message. The book is short, and sort of rambly, and structured more like a Russian doll than anything. He opens stories […]

I read this book because my waiter wrote it–and guys, you need to start talking to your waiters more often

Bonds of Destiny by Rajesh Varma

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A little backstory about me: I like food. My husband and I and one of our good friends have what we call a “dining club,” which essentially amounts to the three of us going out to dinner about once a month, ordering a bunch of wine, and seeing how many witticisms ludicrous statements and/or Monty Python quotes the two guys can drop into the conversation before I lose it. It’s a good time. In February, we went to an Indian restaurant in Glendale, California called the […]

I want to live in this man’s mind…

The View From The Cheap Seats: Selected Non-Fiction by Neil Gaiman

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For me, reading Neil Gaiman is like giving my brain a hug, and that’s equally as true of his non-fiction writing as it is his fiction books. So The View From The Cheap Seats was welcome respite from real life shenanigans, although it is also responsible for my already hefty to-be-read list mushrooming into something that could now blot out the sun. Comprised of a vast array of non-fiction essays, they’re separated into topics to make it easy to navigate for casual readers and ensuring […]

If Only It Could Magically Make Me Want to Clean

Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess by Rachel Hoffman

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I purchased this book immediately after reading the review by sistercoyote. I was intrigued by the premise, and it lived up to the hype. Author Rachel Hoffman recognizes that a lot of cleaning and organizational books/magazines/websites create unrealistic expectations that can leave people feeling like a failure when their efforts don’t turn out the same or they can’t even put in the effort. She makes a point of addressing situations that these other sources don’t: how cleaning can be more challenging if you have a […]



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