Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Compromising Positions

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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Polystyrene magnate Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from the driveway of his Middle Rock, Long Island estate one morning in 1980. After a very tense week in captivity, he is returned upon the payment of $250,000 ransom, but he is much the worse for wear. Nervous and panicky in the aftermath of his ordeal, Carl retreats from the world and is never the same man again. The kidnapping also severely impacts his wife Ruth, and their three children, Bernard (nicknamed Beamer), Nathan, and third sibling Jenny, […]

A Much-Wanted Dialectic

The Unwanted Guest by Tamsyn Muir

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Hah, Ok I thought maybe doing this short story was a little bit cheeky.  But then I saw that fellow Cannonballer Monty had beaten me to the punch! All the permission I needed. In physical sense, The Unwanted Guest was initially a little tricky for me to track down and read because I have so far only seen it in the paperback copies of Nona the Ninth. I wasn’t going to buy a paperback version, as I have already purchased two copies of the book […]

Stephen King’s sprawling historical time-travel epic

11/22/63 by Stephen King

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At work I have a Book Friend who reads mostly horror. He gives me horror recommendations, and I give him sci-fi recommendations, and we both try to enjoy each other’s genre of choice, to varying success. At the other’s insistence, we have both read genre staples without being convinced of their universal relevance (though I have more right to feel aggrieved about this arrangement because Slaughterhouse Five was like 250 pages and It was fucking 1,200 pages, Dorian). It was not for me. I finished It, because I’m a […]

Could This Guy Possibly Be More Ridiculous?

Caleb Williams by William Godwin

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cbr16 bingo Fiasco Well this was a hot mess and a half.  Now I have read many a 17th and 18th century book, but this was a whole different thing.  This was written in 1794, to be sure, but only fifteen years later, Jane Austin was publishing novels that were immensely readable with characters to whom we can relate even to this day.  Godwin?  Not so much.  There was a serviceable plot here, to be sure, but buried under mountains of verbose nonsense.  And the […]

Loving you isn’t the right thing to do.

Luca (Gentlemen of the Emerald City Book 1) by L.A. Witt

Reluctant Rockstar: Reluctant Rockstar #1 by Francis Fox

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CBR16 Bingo: Scandal Luca (Gentlemen of the Emerald City Book 1) by L.A. Witt Three stars It’s the start of the off-season and Ethan is lonely. As a professional hockey player for the Seattle Breakers, dating is hard. However, being one of the few out players on his team, his dating life is closely watched. Since he’s on the road most of the time, he doesn’t have time to date, let alone meet someone he actually wants to date. Touch-starved and depressed, he opens up […]

Now I’m craving scones, tea, and a nap in a cozy railcar

The Mimicking of Known Successes: The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti #1 by Malka Older

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CBR16 Bingo: Earth Day A man vanishes off the platform on the edge of the planet. No one saw him leave but his sudden disappearance is noticed by the small community of people who call this sparsely populated platform home. Mossa, an official investigator, is sent to find out what happened to him. After her initial search turns up nothing but a small lead, she travels to Valdegeld and seeks out Pleiti, a classical Earth researcher and her ex-girlfriend. The story is told from Pleiti’s […]



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