Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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When Lovecraft Dismantles the Government

The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross

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Bob’s Back! And so are the the spoilers for previous books. Be warned! Our main protagonist may be back but all is not good with the world. The Laundry is in big trouble. A mainstay of the British government for decades (albiet a secretive one), The Laundry has suddenly come under scrutiny. Thanks to the events of The Nightmare Stacks, one could argue there is no use trying to hide magic from the general public, and the existence of the department is now public. Unfortunately, […]

Ugh. Meh? Mwah. Ehn.

Lessons by Ian McEwan

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As in, I’m finding it hard to express my feelings about this book. Not because I enjoyed it (I didn’t). Eloquence is overrated anyway.  The plot: a young boy in 1960s England is sent to boarding school, is molested by his (female) piano teacher, then has a relationship with her that lasts for years and hampers him for the rest of his life. We watch Roland Baines grow up, faff around, have a child, fall in and out of love. The red thread in the […]

Rise of the Vermin

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan

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Bonnie reviewed this on here, it sounded very much relevant to my interests, so I ordered it and read it in one sitting. Don’t remember the last time I did this and to be fair, Cockroach is very short, but it still felt great to do this again. The book is Ian McEwan’s take on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, except that instead of a young depressed man turning into a beetle, a cockroach turns into a powerful buffoon, namely the British Prime Minister. This Prime Minister – […]

41: Seasons come and go, but apparently, bad choices are forever.

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I’ve been curious to see how British literature would be changing post-Brexit. Zadie Smith’s Swing Time begins to address this shift in Britain post-2010, but it foreshadows Brexit. Therefore, I was interested to see how Ali Smith’s Autumn would be incorporating Brexit into its main plot. I had heard buzz about her seasonal cycle, but had not made the plunge until my end-of-school-year library binge saw this and the next book make its way into my basket. I am really, really glad I gave this […]



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