Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About carmelpie

CBR14 Participant
CBR15 Participant

Likes: Humor, Scifi, Fantasy, YA and, above all else, unforgettable characters. Dislikes: Unnecessary filler, gurus, tropes (except when I like them), and life advice in ten steps or less.

carmelpie's Reviews:

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Once, twice, and then I gave up

Dune by Frank Herbert

Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks

The Gunslinger by Stephen King

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

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I’ve watched the newest version of Dune a couple of times now and, so far, I’m enjoying it. I contemplated going back and finishing the book but, considering it has been years since I started reading it, it would make the most sense to start again from the beginning. If you have to talk yourself into reading something just to convince yourself “but this time, it will be worth it,” then maybe this book isn’t for you. Along with Dune, I’ve listed a few other […]

Caps lock fever dream

The Gap and the Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

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I don’t remember how I first learned about Benjamin Hardy. Not much of his advice resonated with me. However, one medium post in particular did. In it, he describes the concept of the gap and the gain.  “Your future growth and progress are now based in your understanding about the difference between the two ways in which you can measure yourself: against an ideal, which puts you in what I call ‘the GAP,’ and against your starting point, which puts you in ‘the GAIN,’ appreciating […]

Beside the victory, that’s her destiny

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

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Anna: I’ll have to come back eventually to get the stitches removed and for some checkups. But soon I’m on my own. June: What do you mean ‘on your own’? You can’t even piss by yourself. You gonna waddle down the stairs in that shitty Terminator leg brace to get your delivery tacos three times a day? When we meet Anna, she is scraping by trying to stay afloat doing odd jobs at a local temp agency for henches (villain support staff). After receiving a […]

None of us ever find enough kindness in the world, do we?

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

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To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close at hand and make it stand in for the whole. When I finish a project or some small, self-assigned goal, one of my rewards is gathering a pile of books from my TBR list, usually used paperbacks. For coming-of-age stories, this one had a ton of reviews and, when I spotted it at a half priced books, I snatched it up. […]

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves…

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

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“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” ― Salvador Dali I got this book early last year when I was trying to be more creative, but in the most structured way possible. One thing I fear, which I think many of us fear, is doing something badly. We fear that we will start something, it will be bad, and that means that we are bad at it so what’s the point of even trying? This book is exactly what I needed. It’s […]

And to top it all off, faeries are dicks

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

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“I was told you were dead!” he cried. “I was sure you would be.” There was a pause. Both men felt faintly embarrassed. The ranks of dead and wounded stretched away upon all sides as far as the eye could see. Simply being alive at that moment seemed, in some indefinable way, ungentlemanly. In 2020 and 2021, I dove headlong into fantasy and scifi. As the pandemic raged, I couldn’t tear myself away from magicians, witchers, mistborns, kandra, grisha, alien invasions, teenagers trapped in a […]



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