Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Rooting around in the presidential innards”

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

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Listening to Assassination Vacation is like taking a road trip with your strangest friend. Well, Sarah Vowell is on a road trip- and is unabashedly strange- but having her narrate the journey to you is a little cozy, a little crazy, a little creepy- and a LOT of fun. Her morbid fascination with presidential assassins (both would-be and verified) and the zeal for putting friends and relatives into uncomfortable situations is a hoot, and the audio experience feels like gossiping with your own partner-in-crime. She […]

I liked this better than the other one

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Maybe it’s better for a combination of reasons: the subject matter is more gruesome and eerie and fun. This subject is very clearly a labor of love for Sarah Vowell. The voice of Abraham Lincoln is read by Stephen King, whose raspy New Englandness is nothing like you imagine Abraham Lincoln’s folksy midwesterness to sound like, but maybe it works. Like the other Sarah Voweel audiobooks, this one lives and dies based on who is reading. So this one works better not because she has […]

Somewhat United Themes

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I liked this book just fine. I am trying to figure out if I will never read any more of Sarah Vowell’s books or all of them. I think my issue is that I have to imagine it’s a lot of the same. Not to say that the different subject matters don’t change, but the format is similar. I listened to the audiobook version which has the same issue. You have to love Sarah Vowell’s voice, which is fine by me, but more so you […]

Assassination Vacation (literally! I listened to this on vacation)

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So I took 2 months off of reviewing. The BE clan decided to travel all over the country and world so there was hardly any time to update my reading spreadsheet, let alone write a review. But we’re back and finally all healthy so moments of free time are now available! Welcome to catch-up. And let’s start with an adorable history book about presidential assassinations! In Sarah Vowell’s vein of quirky, off kilter history books this one talks about the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, […]

Practical Tactical Brilliance

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  Sarah Vowell’s books defy easy classification, which can make it annoying when people ask you about them. They are part history, part travelogue, part personal essay and yet that still does not seem to cover it. Her latest book, just out in paperback, concerns the relationship between the United States and the Marquis de Lafayette, the Frenchman whose support was so key during the American Revolution. Vowell begins fifty years after the start of the war, when Lafayette returned to the United States for […]

Hawaiian history factoids for the NPR set

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So this is my second Sarah Vowell audiobook this year. They’ve so far not been OMG have to read! But they’re quick, entertaining, and I learn a little something on my commutes. And they’re often on sale on Audible which makes them a cheap little pick me up. This time we have Unfamiliar Fishes, the story of the Americanization of Hawaii. Starting with Captain Cook discovering the islands, through the first missionaries arriving (from New England of course!) to their grandchildren annexing Hawaii to the […]



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