Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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alwaysanswerb

Blessed are the cheesemakers

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alwaysanswerb's Reviews:

“Sparing another person is a tricky thing. It’s easy to think you’re succeeding when you’re failing spectacularly.”

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

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I like Holly Black’s writing. She she sets books in, basically, our real world with fantasy tweaks, and the stories are unapologetically confident in defense of myth and magic. The Darkest Part of the Forest is set in and around an ordinary town called Fairfold with a supernatural attraction: there is a faerie boy trapped and hibernating in an unbreakable glass coffin in the forest, symbolic of the town’s close proximity to the Fae people. Generations of residents have built lore around the boy and featured him as a player in personal fantasies and dreams, while tourists come to Fairfold […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/25/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:4 |

“War eats the victors last.”

Iron Gold (Red Rising #4) by Pierce Brown

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The Red Rising series continues to be incredibly compelling and well-written, though I admit that I was concerned about Iron Gold. I had read that extending beyond the original trilogy wasn’t part of Pierce Brown’s original plan, so I wasn’t sure if this was going to be a reflection of an author caught in the vortex of a world they’d created, but lacking the clear vision of the first phase of books. What became clear was that the story beginning with Iron Gold IS going to be messier than the arc of the original trilogy, but that’s a natural consequence […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/25/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:3 |

I believe the woman behind the case study, but she’s not unimpeachable

Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey

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What an interesting book this is, and what a challenge to review, given how I came away from it. Anna Lyndsey’s story is that after decades of normal living, she slowly becomes so sensitive to light — both natural and artificial — that she ends up confined to a completely blacked-out room in the home she shares with her husband. Girl in the Dark focuses mostly on her declining health and the time that she spent at her lowest, while she lived in complete darkness for years. Since publication, Lyndsey’s symptoms have apparently abated somewhat, and she doesn’t require complete […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "I believe the woman behind the case study, but she’s not unimpeachable"

2/12/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:2 |

The academic research paper of fiction

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

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For a book that seemed to be received so positively initially, around the time of release, it seems like all I’ve read lately are reviews that are disappointed by how boring it is and confused by why it was so well-liked. You might say my expectations were pretty low. So I had to laugh as I realized I was enjoying it. A Discovery of Witches is EXCESSIVELY academic. Not just in the subject matter, which obviously is, but in the whole tone and writing approach. I recognize every paper I’ve ever written, read, or reviewed in it. The story proceeds […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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1/14/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:1 |

Rolling in with a late Cannonball on a hate read

Red Queen Series (#1-3) by Victoria Aveyard

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So, about three weeks before starting Red Queen, I finished a book called Morning Star, the final book of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy. That series was about a class of humans called Reds who had been born into slavery, in a society that coded humans by color and where each color was assigned a particular role in Society, with Golds on top. The protagonist, Darrow, infiltrated the Golds with the aim of initiating a revolution that would hopefully lead to a more equal society. It was a very good series. I didn’t write a review because I’ve been pretty […]

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12/21/2018 's CBR10 Review No:52 |

“Sci-fi about language”: a heady entry in a favorite subgenre

Embassytown by China Miéville

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I have a niche interest in “sci-fi books about language” (give me all your recommendations!) and so this one came my way. China Miéville is a pretty highbrow author, and this is a pretty literary SF book. It is pretty focused on its own theoretical linguistics and the xenology behind language. It doesn’t go so much for major character development or plot, but it’s not annoying in the way that it can be when a fictional structure is just a lazy device to deliver a sermon. The focal point of the story is Language (proper noun intentional), spoken by an […]

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12/21/2018 's CBR10 Review No:49 |

Bee biology re-imagined through the language of human dystopia

The Bees by Laline Paull

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The Bees is a very weird and cool book that’s a third-person narrative of a literal bee, navigating the dystopian politics of her hive. There are a lot of tropes in here that are not exactly unique to this book among the glut of other dystopian fiction, but the framing of the insect colony is novel. While, naturally, some liberties are taken with facts, the structure and major events of the novel are based on known entomology of bees and how hives operate. All that Paull really needed to do to turn reality into fiction was to choose a point […]

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12/3/2018 's CBR10 Review No:48 |

This is the version of this story that I was looking for

Dating You/ Hating You by Christina Lauren

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A few years ago, there was a book called The Hating Game that featured two people in competition for the same job and even as they pretended to hate each other, sparks were flying and it turned out they actually liked each other very much. Everyone loved that book. I kind of thought it was just okay although I tried very hard to like it. This book has a VERY similar premise and I like it much more. Rather than the romantic comedy contrivance of introducing the characters as “hating” each other (even though it’s quite obvious to the reader […]

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11/24/2018 's CBR10 Review No:47 |


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