Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Our bodies, by their very nature, resist control, a fact that always has felt paradoxically triumphant when I encounter it.”

Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke

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Everyone has a butt, and most everyone accords them more thought and meaning than they do many other parts of their body. But why do we pay them so much attention? How have they come to be so fraught with connotation? I remember seeing this book on NetGalley ages back, but forgot that I wanted to read it until I read Travis_J_Smith’s review last week. This proves I have a terrible memory, because who could forget that cover? I’ve been feeling like reading a micro-history […]

“Disobedient bodies don’t just look a certain way, they act.”

Disobedient Bodies: Reclaim Your Unruly Beauty by Emma Dabiri

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Best for: All those impacted by Western beauty standards. In a nutshell: The way the West defines beauty (‘entangled in the forces of patriarchy and capitalism’) isn’t something to aspire to, and it is holding women back. Worth quoting: “How might we possibly reconcile the reality of the joys and pleasures we can find in our bodies, and in rituals of beautification…with the age-old and sometimes fraught feminist discourses, and the justified pushback against an overemphasis on our looks as not only a drag on […]

“This book’s findings should temper our estimation of the freedom we have to change ourselves.”

Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism by Schneur Zalman Newfield

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CBR15Bingo: North America (the book focuses mainly on the Satmar and Lubavitch communities in New York and New Jersey.) I really enjoyed Degrees of Separation, which examines the experience of leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (specifically the Lubavitch and Satmar communities) and how those who leave form their identities during and afterwards, as well as the long-term ramifications. This is an academic text and so there is a lot of sociology terminology to work through, but Newfield did this study based on interviews so there are a […]

“The further you get from home, the weirder things get.”

The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained by Colin Dickey

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Colin Dickey is a writer on the fringe. His books are about those who fear secret societies (Under the Eye of Power), an American history of ghosts (Ghostland), and monsters/aliens (The Unidentified). In The Unidentified, Dickey meets with and explores what it is that draws people to fringe beliefs. One of his theories is that these fringe beliefs, be they in cryptids or aliens, provide us belonging, comfort, and enchantment in a disenchanted world: “Much of what attracts people to these fringe beliefs is a […]

Thought-Provoking and Meditative

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

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Best for: Those who are interested in being more intentional with their time and attention. In a nutshell: Artist and author Odell explores ways to be more intentional with our time, and how that relates to community and environment. Worth quoting: “That tiny, glowing world of metrics cannot compare to this one, which speaks to me instead in breezes, light and shadow, and the unruly, indescribably detail of the real.” “The impulse to say goodbye to it all, permanently, doesn’t just neglect our responsibility to […]

Unexpected Delight

This Book Will Make You Kinder: An Empathy Handbook by Henry James Garrett

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Best for: All of humanity (but mostly the privileged folks). In a nutshell: Philosopher Garrett makes his case for the reasons we should be kind, and the ways people falter at it. Worth quoting: “The problem is not that oppressed people don’t empathize enough with their oppressors; the problem is that privileged folk don’t empathize enough with the oppressed.” “Our beliefs about the inevitability of certain forms of suffering are intimately connected with our beliefs about what type of world is possible.” “If you believe […]



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