Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

One Last Word by Suzanne Park

One Last Word by Suzanne Park

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Well this had an interesting premise (what if messages you meant to be sent after you died get sent before you do?) and then it just had way too much nonsense with a relationship that never felt realized throughout the book. Also, the main character, Sara sucks in my mind. I just got tired of her not even a quarter into the book. All in all, just a so-so romance novel. One Last Word follows Sara Chae, who recently quits her job when her bosses […]

“Our survival may depend on our talking to one another.”

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

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CBR18 Bingo- One, because it’s the first book in a series. Centuries in the future, a group of seven individuals are summoned to the planet Hyperion, in order to make a pilgrimage to the legendary Time Tombs, eerie structures that are moving backward in time. The Time Tombs are guarded by a creature known as the Shrike, which is said to grant one wish to each pilgrim. The Shrike is seriously terrifying; it is made of blades, can control time, and is known for impaling […]

Reports of His Death Were Greatly Exaggerated

I See You've Called In Dead by John Kenney

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Bud Stanley was, somehow, the lead obituary writer at a New York newspaper until, in a bit of drunken foolishness exacerbated by his recent divorce, he decides to hack into the computer system at work and publish his own obituary. The paper wants to fire him immediately, but they are stymied by the (in my opinion, too cute by half) fact that the network now thinks Bud is dead and therefore can’t be fired. He is suspended until the glitch can be corrected. When his […]

The cat distribution system is in place because it works

Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir

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CBR18 Bingo – Refuge: a pregnant cat and her owner take refuge with someone who didn’t ask for this. A few months ago I got a black cat, which many took as an invitation to talk about how black cats have it worse than others. Look at my cat. He likes the window that makes him hard to photograph. After Night Guest, I wouldn’t have read another book by Hildur Knútsdóttir, but Narfna’s review of Dead Weight reassured me that the black cat would be […]

Whose Frankenstein?

Her Frankenstein by Norikazu Kawashima

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CBR18 Bingo – Friends: because it’s about an abusive toxic friendship. Her Frankenstein by Norikazu Kawashima is a fun little horror story. Kawashima had a brief career doing horror manga in the 80s. His work is classic and beloved and simultaneously forgotten. The volume has a nice overview of his obscure career. Although it can’t be that obscure if it got officially translated to English. The story is about Tetsuo. He can’t function if he doesn’t have a mean woman belittling him for her own […]

The week doesn’t have to make sense

Une semaine de bonté by Max Ernst

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CBR18 Bingo – One: it’s been compiled into one volume from 5, but this book could probably be applied to any of the bingo prompts. Une semaine de bonté by Max Ernst is subtitled ‘a surrealist novel in collage,’ which is accurate and it means ‘a week in kindness,’ which is not. Ernst was a surrealist, Dadaist, and European. Two of those things tell me that nothing in his novel is going to make any sense. So massive thanks to the volume’s publisher’s note for […]



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