This audio book is TWENTY-FOUR HOURS LONG. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the Song of Ice and Fire audio books is like 48 hours, but following a non-fiction book for 24 hours is a challenge for me. Mr. Scahill does a great job of creating a narrative story in the 680 pages of the book, but there are names of people and places that are unfamiliar, which increased the challenge of keeping up. I bought this because I had an audible subscription with […]
Professional athlete of the future turns superhero
This is my last review of the year (and the day)! By some miracle of will power, I met my half-cannonball goal despite only starting reviews last month. Must do better next year, for realz. My final post is for Mara, a YA graphic novel set in the future where professional sports is an even bigger business. Sport competitions keep everyone distracted from the endless world war cycle of Earth. Mara is superstar volleyball player whose been training since she was 2 years old! Barely legal, she lives […]
The Radiance of Tomorrow…aaaannnd Cannonball!
It is the end, or maybe the beginning, of another story. Every story begins and ends with a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a girl, a child. Every story is a birth… To round out my ten African books of the year, I picked up this novel by Ishmael Beah, known for his previous non-fiction, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of A Boy Soldier. After reading this, I definitely want to pick that one up, too. This is fiction, but it’s obviously based on truth. […]
The Best War Reporting I’ve Encountered
War, as the title suggests, is the best war reporting I’ve encountered in my reading thus far. Like everyone’s favorite war-ish cliché, War is visceral. It is heartbreaking. It evokes rage. It harbors contempt. It loves. In the summers of 2007 and 2008 Junger embedded with Battle Company 2/503 Infantry Regiment in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. He was joined by photographer Tim Hetherington. Junger stated that his goal was to just report and even said “It’s a completely apolitical film. We wanted to give viewers the […]