Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the consequences of your own actions.

The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

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CBR18 BINGO: Success, because Dr. Faustus sells his soul to the devil to become a successful magician Notes: The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus exists in 2 versions. The “A” version was published in 1606, and the expanded “B” version was published in 1616. The revisions and additions to the 1616 version are typically attributed to other playwrights, possibly with some input from Christopher Marlowe (both versions were published after Marlowe died, so who really knows for sure). I read the 1606 “A” version, which […]

“Praise then darkness and creation unfinished”

The Left Hand of Darkness: A Novel by Ursula K. Le Guin

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Cbr18bingo Left The Left Hand of Darkness is a Hugo and Nebula award winning novel first published in 1969. It is the story of an alien envoy named Genly Ai who has come to a remote planet called Gethen or Winter in order to speak to its leaders about joining the Ekumen, a kind of alliance of other worlds devoted to the service and betterment of humanity. Genly has arrived at a time when the nations of this planet are on the verge of war, […]

For the nerdiest of word nerds

Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them by Danny Bate

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CBR18 BINGO: You, a homophone of “U.” Also because I speak and write in English. Double Bingo! Diagonal: One, Map, You, 26, Or Four corners and the center: Left, One, Repair, Or, You I’m amazed that anyone whose first language is something other than English can ever master writing in this silly language. It’s so full of contradictions and spelling travesties that one has to wonder how we got to this place. Danny Bate has written a highly detailed account of exactly that. In the […]

My most surprising 5-star read of the year (also Cannonball, finally)

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

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Monthly Keyword 26: Bright Reading the Rainbow: Yellow CBR18 Bingo: Versus (The brave, tenacious and determined women vs the spineless and depraved serial killer Official plot synopsis: Tallahassee, 1978. Sorority president Pamela Schumacher wakes to a shocking scene of implausible violence and death, and is drawn into a mystifying crime that grips the nation for decades . . . In Seattle, Tina Cannon connects her best friend’s disappearance to the Tallahassee tragedy, and is convinced that a single man is responsible. Determined to find justice, […]

Are all fictional detectives neurodivergent?

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

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4.5 stars Dark Corner selection: April 2026 Nowhere Book Bingo 26: Award Winner (Hugo and World Fantasy Award 2025) CBR18 Bingo: Map (there’s a map at the start, showing the various walls to keep out the Levianthans) Official plot synopsis (since I’m reviewing a book I finished in APRIL): <i>In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and […]

“…looking back at those pages, I shivered to see our plunge into darkness, day by day, without realizing it was a spiral, and its nadir, the abyss.”

The Year of the Wind: A Novel by Karina Pacheco Medrano

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Cbr18bingo Sheep. Sheep and other livestock are mentioned throughout the novel and sheep feature prominently in a particularly important scene Earlier in the year I reviewed Rabih Alameddine’s brilliant novel The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) and one of the things I noted in my review is that the narrator, who is a few years older than I am, describes growing up in Lebanon and Beirut in the 1970s/80s. I was in high school and college at that time, and […]



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