Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About Tracy

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40-something psychologist living with a husband, preschooler, and 2 cats. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Tracy's Quick Questions interview.)

Tracy's Reviews:

I Guess I’ll Have to Watch the Movie Now

The Martian by Andy Weir

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I started The Martian knowing very little about it because I haven’t seen the movie or read reviews of the book. It starts with Mark Watney being stranded on Mars and believed dead when a sandstorm necessitates his crew’s leaving only 6 days into what should have been a 31-day mission. The majority of the novel is told from Mark’s POV via log entries he writes. At first I thought the book was going to be all about how Mark was growing potatoes in a […]

A Disappointing Follow Up to Mort

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

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I know Reaper Man is a really well-liked book in the Death subseries of Discworld, but it just didn’t do much for me. I didn’t find it as funny as Mort, and there was more time spent with other characters than with Death in a plot that I just wasn’t all that interested in. In this novel, Death is perceived to have developed too much of a personality and is therefore forced to “retire” and will eventually die, and a new Death will take his […]

Why Did I Wait So Long to Read Terry Pratchett?

Mort by Terry Pratchett

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I finally decided to dip my toes in the Discworld series and after looking up some good entry points, I decided to start with the Death subseries. The novel mainly follows the character of Mort, a young man with no apparent career skills, whom Death chooses to be his apprentice. Mort finds it difficult to accept it when certain people are about to die, especially if it seems to be in an unfair way, which leads to a messy situation the first time he is […]

Simon Snow’s Adventures Come to an End

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

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I didn’t find Wayward Son quite as engaging as Carry On,  possibly because I was already familiar with the world of Simon Snow, or maybe I’m just not a fan of road trip stories. I still enjoyed reading it, and I did eventually feel fully engaged in the novel. It just took a little while for me to get there. The novel is set about a year or so after the events of Carry On. Penny and Baz are finishing up their first year of university, while […]

A Challenge to the Hero-Villain Dichotomy

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

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Hench is set in a world with a lot of heroes and a lot of villains, and children are tested at puberty to see if they have any powers so that they can be trained to be – ideally – heroes. Anna, the first person narrator of Hench, has been freelancing as a hench for villains for about a year. She’s not particularly invested in the work, but it’s a way to pay the bills because the capitalist dystopia we currently live in is still […]

Chosen Ones and Their Problems

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

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Rainbow Rowell was inspired by her own Simon Snow novel and fanfiction that she created in her novel Fangirl, so she decided to go ahead and turn it into its own book (now a trilogy). Both paying homage to subverting other Chosen One and fantasy novels, as well as fanfiction, Simon Snow is the story of a mage grappling with being the Chosen One while also living his day-to-day life with its attendant relationship dramas. In particular, it is expected that he will save the […]



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