Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Importance of Moving Along on Foot

Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

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I have been an avid hiker for many years, but since the onset of the pandemic I also started walking a lot more in the city, at first simply to avoid the crowded public transport, and later because I had begun to enjoy it so much. When I learned that this book existed I just had to read it, and I can now say with conviction that it is a true gem. The first definition of to walk in Merriam-Webster is to move along on […]

The first time I got drunk was on Elijah’s wine.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

Talking about Detective Fiction by PD James

The Year 1000 by Valerie Hansen

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A Field Guide to Getting Lost – 4/5 Stars I wonder about whether this book could be translated as so much of the languaging that happens here (to borrow from Heidegger, someone else whose writing is quite difficult to translate) involves associative and impressionistic wandering often based in a kind of almost punning. There’s a moment late in the book, to spoil a great point, about how in English to be “lost” can happen in both time and space. And that doubling there really speaks […]

“The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.”

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

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I’ve been wanting to read this for years, and my TBR Jar finally plucked this from the pile. There’s just something about that cheeky title that draws you in, but I never got around to it. Unfortunately, my first impressions of the titular piece were very underwhelming. It’s about seven pages long, plus an updated postscript. I wanted a lot more from the ideas the book was titled after. Luckily I at least knew going in that this was an essay collection that would be […]

Writing should in no case be postponed to an “after”

Incidental Inventions by Elena Ferrante

Whose Story is This? by Rebecca Solnit

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This latest collection of Elena Ferrante nonfiction is from a series of columns she wrote (and Ann Goldstein translated) for The Guardian in 2018 and 2019. If you didn’t happen to read the opening introduction from the collection explaining that these are ponderings of specific questions and not pitched essay topics by Ferrante they would seem trite and unimportant. And sometimes they do seem trite and unimportant. But hidden within these are some really interesting ideas about language, fame, women, and other topics of interest. […]

Great Title for an Average Feminist Essay Collection

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

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I downloaded this essay collection a year ago when I attended a work training, and felt like I was being over-explained to by the men presenting a class (I asked a few questions, so it might have also simply been that I was one of the only ones that seemed engage enough to pay attention and hence they directed everything directly to me).  I finally ended up reading it in February/March time frame because I was feeling slightly ignored by a different set of men […]

I always thought I’d get farther. I’d like to blame the world for what I’ve failed to do

The Woman Upstairs; Family Matters; The Library Book; The Blank Wall; The Summer before the Dark; Those Who Knew; Ways of Disappearing; White Fragility; Call them by their True Name; Harbor Me by Claire Messud; Rohinton Mistry; Susan Orlean; Elisabeth Sanxay Holding; Doris Lessing; Idra Novey; Robin Diangelo; Rebecca Solnit; Jacqueline Woodson

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The Woman Upstairs – 2/5 Stars I found this book because of a list listing “Famous angry women in books” or something. And it’s true that the lead character and narrator of this book is very angry. I was hoping she’d be angrier and less articulate about her anger in this book. What’s this book about? It’s about a woman in her early 40s who was an artist who is also an elementary school teacher. She becomes friends with the mom of one her students. […]



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