Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Playing the CBR12 Book Bingo Reading Challenge? Check your card at the August Bingo Check-In post!

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> Genre: Short Stories

soft-core misery porn

Turbulence by David Szalay

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An older woman is on a plane. She and her seatmate are strangers. There is a bout of – wait for it – turbulence, that inserts her into her seatmate’s life. So it begins; a series of lives briefly touching lives from one story to the next. I’m sure that I was meant to feel something while reading this; something was supposed to catch my breath, quicken my heart rate- it was supposed to hit emotionally. Really, I just felt Szalay going through the motions. […]

cbr12bingo – Orange

Sing to It by Amy Hempel

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“A woman of her word can do what she signed on to do.” If you need a quick but cathartic sob, this is the book for you. Clocking in at under 150 pages, Sing To It  houses a tiny and brutal collection of stories- some so tiny that they are just a few sentences long. Do not let the brevity fool you; even the most micro of the micro-fiction within will burn you. Several stories are still playing in my head days later. “Full-Service Shelter” is […]

Toss a coin…etc

The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski

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3.5 #CBR12 Bingo: Repeat (since I’ve already covered the Adaptation square) Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher. This means he roams about the countryside, travelling from place to place, killing monsters for profit. To become a Witcher, he was taken from his family as a child, and long training, magic and special potions make him a strong, fast and highly efficient killer. Based on the stories in this collection, it seems that once, there were a lot more Witchers, now they are rare and unusual, and […]

Real Life Takes Place in Movement

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

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An elderly professor gives lectures on Greek history on a cruise ship, a Polish family vacations in Croatia with dramatic consequences, an immigrant tries to build a new life on a remote island in the north. In the 17th century, Filip Verheyen discovers the Achilles tendon, and Frederik Ruysch revolutionizes embalming techniques, while today, plastination makes it possible to preserve bodies in an incredibly detailed and lifelike fashion. These are just some of the stories told in this book, and in between, there are musings […]

“For without contrasts, how does one appreciate the different forms that joy can take?”

How Long 'til Black Future Month by N.K. Jemison

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  This seemed like a perfect selection for a Black History Month read (yes, I am VERY behind on writing reviews). N.K. Jemison is probably best known for her fantastic Broken Earth Trilogy which you should absolutely read if you haven’t. This book is a collection of short speculative fiction stories which are set in places ranging from the Jim Crow South, to the net, to a dystopian earth colony. One returns to the world of the Broken Earth Trilogy and one introduces her new […]



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