Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Outland- Escapist Apocalypse

Outland by Dennis E. Taylor

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When the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, it’s up to six college students and their experimental physics project to prevent the end of civilization. When an experiment to study quantum uncertainty goes spectacularly wrong, physics student Bill Rustad and his friends find that they have accidentally created an inter-dimensional portal. They connect to Outland—an alternate Earth with identical geology, but where humans never evolved. The group races to establish control of the portal before the government, the military, or evildoers can take it away. Then everything changes […]

Pest? A Matter of Perception

Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains by Bethany Brookshire

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  What defines a pest, really? What makes one animal seen as a loveable little critter that we want to share our space with and the other an irredeemable menace marked for eradication?  In Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, Bethany Brookshire attempts to answer this question by giving us a cultural history of our relationship with these species we deem ‘pest-y’ and what makes us so quick to assign them a villainous role.   One of things that really stood out to me is […]

Smokey the Bear was Wrong

The Big Burn by Timothy Egan

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The Great Fire of 1910 burned 3 million acres in Western Montana, Northern Idaho, parts of Washington and British Columbia. The fire burned in  newly created national forests including the Bitterrroot, Coeur d’Alene, Kootenai and Lolo. Timothy Egan tells the story of the fire and the larger story of the creation of public lands through the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt, forester Gifford Pinchot and John Muir. The politics of resource conservation and the role of fire are certainly relevant now, particularly with the additional complexities […]

Judging a book by its cover worked in my favor this time

For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World by Sasha Sagan

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I picked up this book based entirely on the title and cover for the Read Harder challenge. I had no idea what to expect, but this was such a good get. I checked out the audiobook version read by the author from my local library, but I absolutely will be purchasing a physical copy for myself. I have a very storied past with religion, and my journey of deconstruction continues to this day; despite no longer being religious, I frequently find myself missing religion. More […]

Love to Loathe this set of novellas

Loathe to Love You by Ali Hazelwood

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I haven’t been able to ‘get’ into any big books lately. My mind has been constantly bombarded by family drama, work drama, and society drama. Every time I’ve tried to sink into a nice big book and get lost I’ve had to set it down and it feels like weeks later before I can pick it up again. But I was flying and at the airport early and wanted something to read that wasn’t attached to a screen. Enter this enchanting little anthology. Three novellas […]

Luz Jimenez, Daughter of the Nahua – Guest Post by Terry T

Child of the Flower-Song People by Gloria Amescua, Duncan Tonatiuh

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Throughout history, the lives of certain individuals, when examined closely, illustrate the times in which they lived. This was true of the life of Luz Jiménez. The famous muralists and other artists of Mexico considered Luz to be the perfect model of the Indigenous Woman. She remarked at one time that she didn’t need a picture of herself because she was portrayed all over Mexico City. I heard Ms. Amescua read a part of Child of the Flower-Song People this past weekend. She stated that she […]



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