I am a lifelong football fan and a Baltimore Ravens supporter. When the Ray Rice scandal hit, I swore off the sport for a year because of how poorly the NFL and the Ravens organizations respectively handled the situation. The Rice situation provided me with an excuse to do something I had wanted to do for awhile: watch less football. It’s tough to overstate what a hold the NFL had on my life in my 20s. I’d plan work, break dates, check my phone in […]
From Football field to the Art Gallery
Who is Ernie Barnes? Some people might know him from the football field and some might know him from the art galleries. I know him from Between the Lines: How Ernie Barnes Went from the Football field to the Art Gallery by Sandra Neil Wallace (and illustrated by Bryan Collier). Barnes was a young boy growing up in North Carolina. Shy, not good with words and a love of art set him apart at an early age. However, he was unable to partake in the […]
Don’t call it a Cannonball (but it is)
So this is my 2nd full Cannonball. I did a half in CBR 7, and finished my review for my 52nd book for CBR8 on New Year’s Eve. I’m not sure what happened this year, but I’m super early with my 52nd book! Anyway, my final book last year was suggested by my niece, and it was a meaningful book (The BFG), so I wanted my Cannonball book to be a meaningful one this year. I was in the middle of a few books, and […]
I Kind of Just Feel Nothing with this One
There’s a café in our city with a little “library” that encourages visitors to swap books (leave one, take one), and I’m pretty sure at the moment they have about 4 full sets of all the Twilight series? In any case, on Canada Day, I impulsively did a switcheroo, and got my friend to point at a random book for me to take, which led me to picking up Pop by Gordon Korman. Well, initially it was something like “Vampie Lovers 2” or whatever but I said, I can’t […]