Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Past Is Not Dead (neither am I)

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

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Not my first read of the year, but it is my first CBR14 review! I’ve got a couple dozen other reads that I’ll get around to reviewing soon. I received this ARC in a Goodreads Giveaway (my first! what a hell of a book for a first ARC!). It has not impacted the content of my review. Art Barbara (not his real name, but it sounds anti-cool, don’t you think?) meets Mercy Brown (also not her real name) in 1988 at the second meeting of […]

Is life really just an AI simulation?

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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I have been reading Emily St. John Mandel since her much praised Station Eleven, (I know there are many Station Eleven fans on Cannonball as it was a book group selection.)  I was eagerly looking forward to her latest novel, Sea of Tranquility, and it did not disappoint. Sea of Tranquility is told in a non-linear fashion, like Cloud Atlas and Cloud Cuckoo Land, but since this novel is about time travel, it makes perfect sense to be told that way.  I saw St. John Mandel being interviewed […]

Our Gang

Our Gang by Philip Roth

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I have had some very strong feelings at various times in the last 20 years or so, and while I do love political satire, I have to admit, there’s some truly terrible and bizarre political satire out there. Sometimes you get something wonderful like Veep, or you get something that maybe begins as satire or something like and grows into something more substantial like All the King’s Men and Billy Brammer’s The Gay Place. But other times you get something like Ian McEwan’s deeply embarrassing […]

You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

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I remember hearing about this novel a few years ago and wanting to read it, then forgetting all about it until donttrustthe_bea reviewed it earlier this year. This winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize is set in contemporary South Korea, and through a plot involving a missing person, writer Kyung-Sook Shin examines a clash of generations and dreams dashed. Family is family whether in Korea or elsewhere, and the fact is, we don’t always understand our parents (and vice versa). Too late we regret […]

The Collected Stories of Philip K Dick – Volume 1

Volume 1: The King of the Elves by Philip K Dick

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I have an affection for even the goofiest of the old science fiction stories. That doesn’t mean they’re always good if I have an affection for them, and calling them goofy also doesn’t mean they’re bad. In this first volume of the collected stories of Philip K Dick, we have a selection of many of his early stories, including a few that are often presented together as “Early Stories” like “The Gun”, “The Defenders”, and “The Skull”, the last of which is great. Other stories […]

Disclosure

Disclosure by Michael Crichton

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Have you seen the movie Disclosure? I watched it when I was a teenager. I would be lying if I told you I watched it for almost any reason than I really hoped there would be nudity. I was 13. I liked Michael Crichton and loved Jurassic Park, and still think the book is miles better than the movie, as fun as the movie is. I also recorded HBO presenting Rising Sun at some point, a book I plan to read soon, and well, guess […]



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