Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Teenage Kicks

The Girls by Emma Cline

by Leave a Comment

It’s 1969, and 14 year old Evie is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Her parents have divorced and she lives with her early middle aged mother who is out on a self-search quest full of enemas, wheatgrass and horoscopes. Evie underperforms at school and is set to go to boarding school after the summer, and she spends her summer hanging around with her one true friend, whom she dislikes, obsessively reading magazines and following their hammy beauty routines. Evie is obsessed with […]

If you could explore all your possible lives…

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

by 1 Comment

I saw The Midnight Library (2020) on a random book list that popped up on my phone. It was a list of ten books that the author wished they could read again for the first time. I liked the idea of this list, and I liked some of the books on it. In addition, the premise of this novel sucked me right in. Somewhere, there is a library of books that holds every possible life you could have lived. I’ve spent many moments of my life wondering what […]

Nothing inspiring, but not horrible

Spark by Sarah Beth Durst

by Leave a Comment

This book was a high fantasy world in which the main focus is dragons. The setting is in this land surrounded by mountains, in which the weather is always perfect, because the dragons control it. Anything beyond the mountain range is the wildlands, in which everyone is bloodthirsty, and it’s not at all propaganda. Don’t think about it too much. I think the single best thing about this book was the level of immersion, the level that when you finish reading, you miss something so […]

System Collapse

System Collapse by Martha Wells

by Leave a Comment

System Collapse is the latest in the Murderbot Diaries. I plan to reread all of these this year, so I’ll be brief in this one. Suffice it to say, this is the best sci-fi you can read right now. It is wildly human, using the speculative nature of a robotic brain learning how to be a real boy to explore living with neuro-divergence. On top of that, Murderbot would do anything for his humans (it’s baked into his nature), would rather be watching media than […]

Is it too early in the year for me to claim my favorite book?

Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky

by 4 Comments

Reader, this book grabbed me by the perpetually wet shoestrings and dragged me through the night on a quixotic and tragic adventure. We know the hallmarks of Southern Gothic, but what about New England? Often we get the “spooky” bits of New England: Lovecraft, Salem, Puritans, but that’s not the full scope of New England Gothic. As a life-long resident of the damp and dark North, allow me to shed some weak Winter light on our Gothic trademarks: dying mill towns crumbling churches perpetual piles […]

It’s good if you’re looking for a light read

Maze Runner by James Dashner

by Leave a Comment

The setting of this book is a dystopian world, but for the main character specifically, it is a maze. There is only one truly safe area, in the middle, where everyone lives. The book begins with Thomas being lifted into the center of this maze, called the Glade. Once he is introduced to the Gladers, he begins to tour jobs, until a girl arrives. The only girl to ever be seen within the Glade. This book was excellent, one of those books where while you […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo