Cannonball Read 14

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The President has an Academy Award and Who’s the Prime Minister of England?

The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross

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So it turns out that you can have a decent Laundry Files novel without Bob Howard as central figure; The Labyrinth Index follows Bob’s colleague Mhari Murphy who was turned into a vampire in a previous novel (one I haven’t read) thanks to a computer program/advanced math/parasite infection thing. It turns out that England is now under the control of new Prime Minister N’yar Lat-Hotep, although he doesn’t use that name with the general public. Mhari though being formerly of the Laundry which now goes […]

Night of the Living Hello Kitty Princess Demon-Deity

Escape From Yokai Land by Charles Stross

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I’ve had Charles Stross’ Laundry Files series in my TBR for a while; got the first one on Kindle sale a while back; it was pretty good. Grabbed 3 more from the library, although not quite in sequence. It turns out that you can read this series out of order and it will still mostly make sense. There may be references to someone dies or got married or is in another job or a certain probably evil who knows what is back, but how that […]

A Book on Video Games with Some Design Flaws

Game On!: Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and More by Dustin Hansen

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If I have one complaint about Game On!: Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and More, it’s to do with the page and section design, not the content. As the title suggests this book is a history of video games and game systems beginning with the arcade type things like Pong on the big Atari machine, all the way to Overwatch on many device types. The overall thesis of the book is pretty straightforward, that most hit games stand on the […]

The value of female friends over boys wins for once

Komi Can't Communicate, vol. 17 by Tomohito Oda

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Komi Can’t Communicate is mostly a cozy manga series about high school kids and friendship. It’s reasonably predictable with no real disasters and some occasional comic moments. The protagonist Komi is the class beauty but she’s got social anxiety to the point where it’s difficult for her to speak to anyone in public, but this is taken by most people as ‘cool’. Tadano is the totally average guy who seems to understand Komi and decides to help her work on her anxiety and make friends. […]

The Near Perfect Read Does Exist

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

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I have not had the best of luck when authors whose work I enjoy recommend other stuff; I was definitely uncertain about Seanan McGuire’s recent recommendation since some of her tastes (inclination towards horror specifically) do not match my own. However, Legends and Lattes went on $1 sale for Kindle, and I figured, why not at least try it, it sounds like it might be ok. It was not ok; it was perfect (almost). Legends and Lattes takes a lot of very standard tropes but […]

Come for the Recipes, but maybe not the Puns

Husbands That Cook by Ryan Alvarez, Adam Merrin

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Husbands That Cook caught my attention first with the title, and then with the notice that it was a vegetarian cookbook. The husbands of the title are Ryan and Matt (apparently they have a blog but that’s outside my pop culture knowledge) who pre-pandemic seem to have been big into trying out all the various local (LA-ish) restaurants; a lot of the recipes are international, but not always the same old, which is nice. Yes, there’s the expected shakshuka, bibimbap, samosas, ramen, and a tagine, […]



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