I finished this novel a few days ago, then I saw yesterday that Heather North, the voice of the original Daphne, had just passed away. Thus it seems that this is a perfect time to reflect upon Scooby Doo and his friends. In terms of cartoon analogies, Meddling Kids is closest to the recent Mystery Inc incarnation of the series because of the edgier character relationships and mysteries faced. In the cartoons, there are mysterious helpers some of whom turn out to be evil, and […]
Slavery and “freedom” in the new world
There has been a lot of buzz surrounding The Underground Railroad (2016) by Colson Whitehead. It was, of course, on my most-used book list this year: NPR’s Best Books of 2016. But just in case that’s not enough, it also won the Pulitzer Price and the National Book Award. I’d heard a little bit about it before reading it, and I have to say I wasn’t sold on it. A real underground railroad during slavery? I couldn’t understand why Whitehead would feel the need to add that fantastical […]
How many more books until Brandon Sanderson? Ohhhh, it’s four. That’s so many.
My crawl through this series continues. To be honest, I’d optimistically hoped that I’d be able to finish it by the end of 2017. I was in a good position to, having already read the first five books. Nine books in twelve months? Easy peasy. Except . . . each book has gotten progressively harder to get through. Less and less happens. The flaws stand out more as the plot thins. I’ve gotten through three of these books in ten months. Even if I manage […]
I am not a gamer, but I think I might know how it works now
The premise of NPCs is not terribly original: what if when people stopped playing, the world of the D&D-like game kept moving, and the characters who aren’t actually players have independent existences. I feel like I’ve seen this sort of thing before, but at the same time, here it was still somewhat entertaining. This is not highly literary fiction one reads for the sake of being able to say one has read it; this is the kind of thing you read when you want something […]
Welcome back to the awesomeness of Mr. Gaiman
At some point in the past year or so, I somehow got the idea that I didn’t especially like Neil Gaiman books; I blame a probably-too-fast re-reading of American Gods. Then I picked up Neverwhere off my TBR shelf (and it is a full shelf and a half right now), and I was reminded, oh, yeah, that’s why… Neverwhere is basically Gaiman’s breakout hit, the novelization of a tv show that Gaiman says he’d always kind of intended to make into a novel, even as […]
Scratches an itch I didn’t even know I that I had.
I’ve had a pretty good year of discovery here on Cannonball Read. I’ve encountered new authors who wrote books that deeply touched me (Colleen Oakley, Emily St. John Mandel, Peter Heller, Frederick Backman), rediscovered old favorites, explored new worlds opened by trusted authors (Andy Weir and John Scalzi), and been forced to reconcile with my own failures and limitations (Columbine, Chimamanda Ngozi, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Alexander). But there are a handful of books that really stand out, and they aren’t always the best, despite the […]