Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Those Still Living…

Tokyo Redux by David Peace

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Read as part of CBR15Bingo: getaway. I’m swapping this one out for “violence (banned).” Though this book is plenty violent. Plus, I really want an excuse to write about this book and make it count for CBR15Bingo.  I don’t know what to say really. This trilogy wrecked me. And to think, I wouldn’t have picked it up if not for journalist Max Read’s suggestion. I read the last three books of David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet last year and you can look at the tag […]

Dual Narratives That Come Full Circle

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

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I mentioned at the end of my review of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet that I was disappointed the rest of the Wayfarers books wouldn’t be about the crew of the Wayfarer. That disappointment disappeared immediately upon starting A Closed and Common Orbit. The book starts very soon after the end of the previous book. The AI Lovelace is in a new (and illegal) body kit and is traveling with Pepper to Pepper and Blue’s home on Port Coriol. Lovelace, who soon […]

Isn’t it pretty to think so?

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

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CBR15 BINGO: Sex, because people are having casual sex in this book, except for Jake because. . .ya know. It has been banned and challenged because of its focus on sex (in addition to general debauchery). BINGO: South America, Politics, Take Flight, In the Wild, Sex “You’re an expatriate, you’ve lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an […]

“Sometimes I think,” she said slowly, “that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn’t make it past noon.”

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

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CBR Bingo – On the Air This book came highly recommended by a few people who have similar reading sensibilities as me, so I went into it presuming I would like it, and I was not wrong. However, bit of a quick disclaimer: I was shaken up at the start of the book because in this instance, judging the book by its cover will leave you on uneven footing as you get your book legs (I’m workshopping it a la “sea legs.” You heard it […]

Your Own Little Bit of Batshit.

The Theory of Everything Else: A Voyage Into the World of the Weird by  Dan Schreiber

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Once upon a time, many, many years in the past, muddling around in mild conspiracies theories were sort of rather fun? From cryptids like Bigfoot, oddball happenings with aliens and Timecube, there was a strange attraction to other people’s particular niche brands of madness.  As a kid, or even a young teen, I found this kind of thing pretty harmless. But sadly, in more recent years conspiracies have gotten far less fun; as conspiracy went mainstream it changed from cute coincidences and goofy silliness to […]

Adding vampires to history and historical fiction, metaphor or plot device?

Scarlet by Genevieve Cogman

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Bingo 16: History Scarlet is basically fan-fic of historical fiction; totally counts for history since the historical part is real (revolutionary-era France). The historical fiction base is The Scarlet Pimpernel, set in the aftermath of the execution of the rulers of France; if you don’t know the story basically the mysterious masked hero from England saves the lives of French nobility by sneaking them out of France while the French authorities try to put a stop to that. So, basically, Batman who is British and […]



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