Cannonball Read 9

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

You’re gonna love whenever they make this into a tv series

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran

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So I have to admit I don’t know that this book (series) is for everyone. There’s a conversation I had or something I read or heard about the difference between a puzzle and a mystery. A puzzle is designed to be solved and the pieces and clues necessary to do so are all available. And so whether you’re going to an Escape the Room or playing a Resident Evil game or reading an Agatha Christie novel, you’re enmeshed in an a puzzle or series of puzzles. A mystery is more of a vague thing. It’s mysterious because it doesn’t have […]

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6/21/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:245 |

Today was my last teacher workday, so I read this.

The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch

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Diane Ravitch doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories, and neither do I. If you hold the belief that education is a funneling institution designed to make people dumber and more compliant and more consumerist and all that, I think you’re foolish and wrong. If, though, you talked about how one of the effects of a schooling based in testing, accountability, profit, and various other aims that are not really part of the goals of education is some version of the above, then I might agree with you. Like a lot of things in politics, the ways schools are run is a […]

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6/21/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:244 |

Kind of dips back into familiar territory.

Unexpected Stories by Octavia E Butler

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It’s hard to give this minor collection of stories more than a three because it’s only two stories and they’re kind of well-worn territory for Butler and one of them was even commissioned, and it’s fine, but it’s just not quite the same as something a little more inspired. That said, these are definitely Octavia Butler stories. There’s all the trademarks, and if you’re especially familiar with her work, namely the two early series of novels she wrote, then these feel either very familiar or a little uncanny. The first story, which is a long novella, is about a being […]

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6/21/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:243 |

Weirdly this reminded me of “Split”

Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold

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So I haven’t read The Hallowed Hunt yet, but I will probably this summer. But otherwise, I don’t find the World of the Five Gods to be particularly funny. But luckily this book was funny, and it reminded me of how funny a lot of the Vorkosigan Saga is. Even the more serious books like Memory or Barryar have their moments, but the outright comedies like Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and A Civil Campaign are not only funny, but constructed like comedies, where the stakes can be real but ultimately work out. This book had that same feel. Bridging off the discussions of demonic possession in Paladin […]

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6/20/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:242 |

Eminently OK true crime

The Axeman of New Orleans by Miriam C Davis

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For a book about someone killing people with axes, this isn’t the most interesting book I’ve read….this week. This is the story of a New Orleans serial killer who targeted primarily Italian shopkeepers in the early 20th century. This book is drenched with a time in the country in which anti-Italian sentiment was pretty strong, and this book investigates that aspect of these crimes. But it oversells the “racial” dynamic of these crimes. As weird and sad as these crimes are, the real miracle is that some poor black man wasn’t falsely accused of them. In fact, the witnesses keep […]

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6/19/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:241 |

May be total bunk, but perfectly entertaining

Hero of the Empire by Candace Millard

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So my caveats are: This is pop history and all its trappings are possible and present within this. I don’t know almost anything about the Boer War going in so I can’t challenge anything. I listened to the audiobook, so any reference material used was not directly cited.   But I found this very entertaining. It’s about Winston Churchill’s Boer War experiences first as a combatant and then as a war reporter who is captured and then escapes, and then spends a bunch of time in South African desert/savanna behind enemy lines and trying to get back to safety. I […]

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6/17/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:241 |

Helps to avoid the pitfall of similar books in recent years

The Mare by Mary Gaitskill

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In a lot of recent novels about cross-cultural/racial adoption and other very similar/adjacent topics, there’s been some good novels that have rough edges and underdevelopment of characters. What often happens in these novels is that the well-meaning white people (usually white lady) gets in over her head or over simplifies the world or is naive and destructive. I know that plenty of white people are like this and do these things, so I won’t set out to defend them or anything like that. But a lot of these novels fail to see that to write convincing characters, even if their […]

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6/17/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:240 |

Bad Dirt Bad dirt what you gonna do

Bad Dirt by E. Annie Proulx

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I read the first collection of “Wyoming Stories” a few years back and it’s pretty good. It contains “Brokeback Mountain” which if you haven’t read, you should find a way to do right now, because it’s just so so so good. And it lacks the issues/flaw I think the movie has. But without that story, the collection is just ok. It’s mostly about the originating mythos of a place like Wyoming and beginning to explore its weirdness. This collection is much stronger and while it doesn’t have a star, it also doesn’t have the uneven balance that a collection of […]

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6/17/2017 | 's CBR9 Review No:239 |

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