Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Mothers and Daughters

My Mama, Cass: A Memoir by Owen Elliot-Kugell

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Cbr16bingo Celestial (bingo)    Cass Elliot was a rock star and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Owen Elliot-Kugell is Cass Elliot’s daughter, orphaned at the age of 7 after Cass’s tragic and unexpected death in London in July of 1974. Now in her 50s, Owen has spent many years missing her mother and trying to learn as much about her as possible from those who knew her — family, friends and people who worked with her in the music business of […]

I just want to see what the performance reviews look like

The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend by Rob Copeland

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Like the delightful Marie Kondo, I love mess. Especially if it’s someone else’s. Copeland tells the origin story of Ray Dalio, hedge fund phenomenon turned self-help guru. Though an indifferent student in school, Dalio was locked in at his gig as a caddy for the wealthy where he made the connections that led to the establishment of Bridgewater Associates. At first, Dalio obsesses over building a kind of Grand Unified Theory for investing that accounts for the vagaries of geopolitics. Once he has successfully codified […]

Get to know Bob Mortimer

And Away… by Bob Mortimer

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Cbr16bingo bananas If you know who Bob Mortimer is, “bananas” as a bingo square choice needs no explanation. Mortimer is a British comedian who has had a decades-long successful career performing live and on TV with his partner Vic Reeves (Jim Moir). My husband bought me Mortimer’s autobiography last year because we are both big fans of his from seeing him on British panel shows such as Would I Lie To You (WILTY) and on Taskmaster. Mortimer is a master storyteller— some of them true, […]

Whitewashed Histories and Walls

White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port by Kate Storey

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CBR16 Bingo: Cult – The Kennedys have rather a cult following, and in this book particularly we learn how many people were so fascinated they swarmed their homes in Hyannis Port. When the Kennedy family decided to make their summer home in Hyannis Port, MA, they little suspected how strongly associated the place would become with their aspirations and their scandals. I’m a Massachusetts native, but my family’s roots there don’t go back long enough to have really witnessed the heyday of the Kennedys in […]

A Prison of a Book

The Curse of the Marquis de Sade by Joel Warner

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CBR16 Bingo: Scandal – The Marquis de Sade lived about every year of his life scandalously, and there’s plenty of scandal that follows around the scroll and Aristophil as well. The Marquis de Sade is a divisive figure in literature, with as many people arguing for him being a visionary as there are for him being a mere maniac. But less known is the complicated journey of the manuscript of his best-known work The 120 Days of Sodom and how it came to be involved in a […]

“…the domestic angel of Victorian fantasy momentarily gave way to a bloodthirsty ghoul”

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale

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Bingo: Rage Someone recommended The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher to me and, as someone who likes a good mystery and who started watching the tv show but then dropped it because of all the muttonchops, it seemed right up my alley. In theory I should love Kate Summerscale’s portrait of a middle class Victorian era family tragedy. In practice I think it could have used some editing and perhaps not every stone needed to be unturned (or turned?); however, I can be in the mood […]



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