Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I googled ‘monkey brothel’, had an existential crisis, and eventually found the details I wanted in a New Yorker article titled ‘Monkey Business’.”

Sex Power Money by Sara Pascoe

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Frequently, I find myself disagreeing with Sara Pascoe- but it’s not a problem! She’s funny, curious, and well-researched, and she makes no claims about being objective. She leans right into the fact that she her opinions are colored by her past experiences, and she remains open to other ideas and beliefs even if they do not mesh with hers. She is open and honest about her past experiences- especially those that pertain to sex, power, and money. Some are truly harrowing, yet she is a […]

“I can remember how grown-up I felt then, and earlier, since about nine. Because we age one way, in one direction, every age we are is the most grown-up we’ve ever been.”

Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body by Sara Pascoe

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Sara Pascoe is here for you. There is no stone she won’t turn over and no story she won’t tell, because she is going to use her embarrassments, misunderstandings, failures, and larks to help you learn. If you are looking for a medical textbook on what it means to be a human woman then go ahead and look elsewhere. If you want a smart and unflinching comedian to share her life story with you while looking back through biology, history, and cultural norms in order […]

Her Voice

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

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Carmen Maria Machado’s voice is a fine-honed instrument. She reads In the Dream House, her memoir of receiving abuse in a same-sex relationship, at a volume just above a whisper. She is hushed, quick, and measured yet still barreling down. Her voice is arresting. You will stop dead-still to catch her every intake of breath. She is a force to be reckoned with. I am in awe of her strength; her strength to survive, her strength to document, and her strength to share her darkest […]

“We all recognize a likeness of Shakespeare the instant we see one, and yet we don’t really know what he looked like. It is like this with nearly every aspect of his life and character: He is at once the best known and least known of figures.”

Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

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There is a lot to say about Shakespeare, but there is not a lot to know. Bill Bryson, everyone’s favorite kindly uncle, lays the facts bare while gently chiding all of the (mostly bonkers) “hopeful suppositions” that have been presented as facts by well-meaning and often obsessed fans, historians, and scholars. Bryson, himself an acolyte at the altar of Shakespeare, paints a bright and brisk portrait of the man that we know to be Shakespeare. We know very few things about him; there are only […]

“Cinema helps us to remember that although we all have the right to shine, some of us must shine in the background, out of focus, and not too brightly.”

Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade

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Finally, a book about the greatest film of our generation! What film, you may ask? What film does Richard Ayoade venerate, dissect, cling to, and live for? Richard Ayoade; the author of several books on film, director and writer of several films, host of a delightful travel show, and beloved cast member/co-creator of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (and many other things) has written an entire book about the forgettable 2003 Gwenyth Paltrow rom-com View From the Top. Yes, View From the Top; the movie where Mike Myers […]

This should really be titled The Secret History of Wonder Woman’s Creators.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

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This wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was pretty good all the same. I think this three star rating is due to two things: 1) I was expecting more of a history of Wonder Woman the character with some stuff about her creator(s) thrown in as well, and what I got was a history of her creator(s) in full, along with a healthy side order of what was actually going on in history at the time, with an emphasis on the history of feminism, […]



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