Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

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.

 

We Don’t Have to Accept This

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Dr Emily M. Bender and Dr Alex Hanna

by Leave a Comment

Rating: 5 Stars In a nutshell: Experts in the field Bender and Hanna explore all the issues with AI – from what falls under the category, to how it impacts real people, and how we can demand better. Best for: I think this should be mandatory reading for anyone who uses ChatGPT to write an email. Or any executive who claims their company should be ‘AI forward’ (whatever the fuck that means). But also, it’s great for folks like me who have a reputation for […]

A Theory of Dinniman Sucess

Operation: Bounce House by Matt Dinniman

by Leave a Comment

I have read 7 of the 8 currently available Dungeon Crawl Carl books so far, but it took me until Operation: Bounce House to figure out how to describe what I’ve read of Matt Dinniman in terms of genre. Operation Bounce House is not part of the Carl series; it’s a stand-alone, with different cast and different universe, but also some distinct similarities including genre and general tone. The premise is still conventional sci-fi: human colonists of New Sonora are mostly farmers who, with the […]

Other People’s Houses by Clare Mackintosh

Other People's Houses by Clare Mackintosh

by 3 Comments

I really loved this installment of the DC Morgan series. Mackintosh was firing on all cylinders. Also the first few pages of the book show the location of the house, families who live there and I was happy as a clam feeling like I was getting a modern Agatha Christie. We also get to see Ffion and Leo fully together in this one and everyone knows. I liked that their relationship is out in the open and it’s a big part of the story (Ffion […]

The Road to Hell

The Long Walk by Stephen King

by Leave a Comment

Cliff Young, a 61-year old sheep farmer, won the first ever Sydney to Melbourne ultramarathon in 1983. He did it by running slowly but most effectively and by sleeping only for two hours during the first night when his competition slept for six hours. Eventually, he skipped sleeping altogether. He won the race by a landslide and also set a new record. His stamina was forged in the 1930s when he run for days finding and gathering sheep in the Australian wilderness. Effectively, he had […]

“If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.”

The Stranger by Albert Camus

by 3 Comments

Or as I’d call it, “Bartleby the Scrivener, only with murder”. Years ago, I read Albert Camus’ The Plague (frighteningly enough, during Covid, which is a perfect time to read a book about the mass deaths and utter hopelessness an epidemic can cause) and had always been curious about reading this. Now that I have, I have to say I preferred The Plague, mostly because all I can muster up as an opinion on The Stranger is that I read it and didn’t hate it. […]

The title says it all

A Timid Lady was Turned into an Ugly Cat, but on the Verge of Fainting is Picked up by the Most Fearsome Military Duke, vol. 1 by otori, Ema Okadachi, Kou Kusaka

by Leave a Comment

I enjoy reading very specific and long titles, but I’ve never wanted to read beyond the name until I saw A Timid Lady was Turned into an Ugly Cat, but on the Verge of Fainting is Picked up by the Most Fearsome Military Duke by otori, Ema Okadachi, and Kou Kusaka. The title is very accurate. Marie is the oldest daughter of some viscount and doesn’t have much going for her. The story tells us she’s fat and plain – meaning she looked exactly like the […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo