Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Colonialism Lives!

The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy by Philippe Sands

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CBR 15 Bingo – Africa: This book is about the Chagos Archipelago, which is a part of Mauritius, as well as the aftereffects of colonial legacy in Africa more generally. In the 1960s, Britain created its last colony when it detached the Chagos Islands from the fledgling nation of Mauritius, forcibly deporting the residents whose families have lived there for centuries. Philippe Sands, who was one of the lawyers representing Mauritius at the World Court, tells the story of how this came to be, and the […]

Getting in my review of Class Act

Class Act by Jerry Craft

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Class Act reminded me of The Hate U Give, in that we have a protagonist who is attending a school with predominantly white, privileged classmates. Our main characters are Drew and Jordan (Jordan was the focus on Craft’s previous book in this universe, New Kid) as they deal with being scholarship student eighth graders at Riverdale Academy.   But what’s this story about, you ask? From Goodreads: “Eighth grader Drew Ellis is no stranger to the saying “You have to work twice as hard to […]

CBR15 Bingo: Politics

Jingo by Terry Pratchett

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4.5 stars CBR15 Bingo: Politics (the word is used 18 times over the course of the novel) Official book description: It isn’t much of an island that rises up one moonless night from the depths of the Circle Sea — just a few square miles of silt and some old ruins. Unfortunately, the historically disputed lump of land called Leshp is once again floating directly between Ankh-Morpork and the city of Al-Khali on the coast of Klatch — which is spark enough to ignite that […]

50 Years of Feminism

50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution by Katherine Spillar, Eleanor Smeal, Gloria Steinem

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Seminal articles, pieces of fiction, and letters to the editor compiled from fifty years’ worth of Ms. magazine provide us with a glimpse into the last half-century of the feminist movement. For someone living in the 21st century, I have a hefty digital collection of midcentury magazines. I find it fascinating to immerse myself in the minutiae of such a different period, seeing how the world was expected to look at the time. I even like reading the advertisements! I haven’t read any old editions of […]

September 2023 Leftovers

Ex Machina, Book Five by Brian K. Vaughan

Windfall by Wendy Corsi Staub

The Big Bundle by Max Allan Collins

The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri

Guts and Genius: The Story of Three Unlikely Coaches Who Came to Dominate the NFL in the '80s by Bob Glauber

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Let’s please do something about climate change before it’s too late. I miss fall. And far more importantly: people’s lives are at stake. Ex Machina Book Five **** Mixed feelings on how this series ended. I think in many respects, the superhero stuff was handled better than the political angle through most of its run. That’s not something I thought I’d be saying after the first book. Making Mayor Hundred a contrarian centrist type was uninspired back then and comes off as even more annoying […]

The Faces That Launched a Thousand Political Conflicts

Medieval Royal Mistresses: Mischievous Women who Slept with Kings and Princes by Julia A. Hickey

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In an era where women were constrained by their sex and status, royal mistresses managed to have outsized influence of English history through their connections with kings and the children that they bore them. As I got into this book, it occurred to me that when you learn about history, the various favorites of kings and queens are left out except in very few instances where the story would make no sense without their inclusion (Anne Boleyn of course comes to mind). Instead their illegitimate […]



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