Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Video Games and the “Real World”

Press Start to Play by Daniel H. Wilson, John Joseph Adams, Ernest Cline

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Bingo Review 2: Shelfie I honestly have no idea how long Press Start to Play has been on my literal TBR shelf, but it’s been a while. I figured this was as good a reason as any to finally pick it up, especially since I actually broke down and bought a Nintendo Switch Light a few weeks ago. I’ve never been much of a gamer; I didn’t grow up with it really, unless you count the educational stuff like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers. I […]

Samantha’s hand were still red from the cold, the skin over her knuckles taut and dry.

Ark by Veronica Roth

Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin

Forward by Blake Crouch

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Mostly I got this collection because I was interested in some short stories for walks and I like the mix of authors in general. Blake Crouch tells us in the intro/outro to each story the basic purpose of the collection, and like all such genre anthologies, it’s a mixed bag. The audio productions are really good with Evan Rachel Wood, Jason Isaacs, Rosa Salazar, David Harbour, Steven Strait, and Janina Gavankar are the readers of these stories. Each come in around an hour and all […]

The Forward Collection, ed. by Blake Crouch, was a fun success, except for that one story I didn’t like at all.

Ark by Veronica Roth

Summer Frost by Blake Crouch

Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin

The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay

You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles

Randomize by Andy Weir

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I’m putting all my reviews of this collection in one post. Blake Crouch commissioned a bunch of his writer friends to bring him stories about some aspect of near-future technology, and how that might affect life on earth. These are what they gave him (along with Crouch’s own story). “Ark,” by Veronica Roth – 3.5 STARS This is miles above the last book I read from Roth in quality. It seems she’s learned how to be subtle, which is good! This first story in the […]

We’re welders on the moon, we carry a harpoon

Artemis by Andy Weir

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If you liked The Martian, this book should be up your alley. It’s a little flashier and heavier on the fiction side of science fiction, but it’s definitely a grounded realistic space story similar to Weir’s first book. This was a bit more Ocean’s 11 on the moon than the man vs nature tale of The Martian, but much like the first book, the action is grounded in a well-thought out extrapolation of current science and what it would mean for the future, while still […]

Last Short Story Was a Bust

Randomize by Andy Weir

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So this was the shortest of the stories in the “Forward” collection and honestly my least favorite. It was beyond boring and the ending was just a meh moment to me. I wanted something more for a supposed science fiction book. Talking about quantum physics and entanglement didn’t do a thing for me. “Randomize” is at the heart just a boring heist story. We follow a member that plans on stealing from a Las Vegas casino using quantum physics. Yeah, that’s a new one on […]

All the science of The Martian, less of the fun

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I’ll start this by saying, I really did genuinely enjoy Artemis. It’s just that The Martian set the bar really damn high. Anyone with a passing understanding of the first book or movie knows what they’re getting into – snappy wit, detailed technical science, and insane problems with even crazier solutions. Artemis delivers on every single score, seriously. But somehow a breakneck story about a heist ON THE MOON just started to drag. Weir creates these wonderful worlds just a few technological leaps ahead of our own. Here, […]



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