Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Own Voices

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

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  This is my Bingo choice for Own Voices and it’s simultaneously a great one and a terrible one in that it is a fictional book written by a transgender lesbian author about the struggles of changing one’s body to reflect a changing understanding of ones self, and the love the protagonist has for her same-sex roommate.  Perfect, right? The body she’s changing into is a non-human one, not because she has never felt at home with herself, but because their telepathic hormonal communication works better in a body like their own and she wants to be closer to an […]

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7/12/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:46 |

2018 – I Can’t Quit You

American Street by Ibi Zoboi

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This last year, like many Cannonballers, I read more books than I got a chance to review and so this final review of 2018, which will end up being my first review of 2019, is a sort of odds and ends.  Here in no particular order are books that I read while in China, books I read while on vacation in Northern Wisconsin, and books I read during my fall and spring semesters that I just didn’t have time to write about at the time. However, I wanted to get something down about each one of these. [In terms of […]

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1/1/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:1 |

I did not enjoy it.

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

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And I’m pretty bummed about it. I wanted to like it. I liked the first half, in which nerd genius Laurence and young witch Patricia meet in middle school and become half-assed friends. I liked its many, many beautiful lines. I liked young Patricia and to a small degree, adult Patricia. I liked that it was a book by a trans woman that got mainstream attention without her trans-ness being the reason. I liked the cover art. I liked that a nonbinary character who used they/them pronouns was included in a very matter of fact way. I loved enthusiastically picturing Mr. […]

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9/30/2017 's CBR9 Review No:26 |

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

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I’ve been dreading writing this review. I just don’t know what to say about this book, because I don’t really know how I feel about it, still, and it’s been months since I finished it. Ultimately, I just don’t think this was the book for me, but that kind of thing doesn’t fill up a review space. It’s also not helpful to anyone reading this review, because only people who pay extremely close attention to my reading habits might have a clue what a “for me” book looks like (why an individual reader is drawn to a particular book is one […]

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8/31/2017 's CBR9 Review No:64 |

Meh, At Least It’s Short!

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

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I read this both because my book club assigned it for the month of April and also because I am a Hugo voter and got a free copy of it in the voting packet.  I was familiar with Anders’ work, mostly essays and some short stories, and thought this book sounded really interesting from the description.  It was a combination of magic and science, takes place in the SF Bay Area, about modern life with fantastical elements.  Sign me up! But this book kind of dragged and also sped forward in ways that didn’t work for me.  I like the […]

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7/3/2017 's CBR9 Review No:18 |

I loved all these crazy birds

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

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This is a deliciously weird book, and if people have love-it or hate-it reactions to it I could not be less surprised. There are often very pretentious and meta conversations among geeks regarding the differences that delineate (with very fluid, hazy borders) fantasy and science fiction. Sometimes, this happens because of “bad” sci-fi, that doesn’t actually explain its science very well, and gaps in the world building may as well be explained by magic. All the Birds in the Sky deliberately takes this idea and runs with it, by pitting science and magic against each other. It’s not just that […]

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6/14/2016 's CBR8 Review No:44 |

I know the birds were supposed to be important because the title said so

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

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All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders is a perfectly cromulent novel. But there’s nothing about it that set my soul on fire. To be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure why it won the Emperor Norton award. It’s a fine novel, but I didn’t see anything that would be “extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason.” in the novel. The plot follows Patricia and Lawrence from childhood through adulthood. Lawrence is a science geek and an inventor. Patricia is a witch. It’s set a couple of years in the future (actually, I […]

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3/6/2016 's CBR8 Review No:16 |

Science vs. Magic: Can’t We All Just Get Along?

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

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Charlie Jane Anders’ new novel is about science, magic, and the need to work together for the sake of the world. Our two main characters are the embodiment of science and magic. Laurence is a gifted geek who, in 8th grade, figured out how to make a wristwatch time machine. It could only take you 2 seconds into the future, but still…. Patricia is a magic and nature geek who occasionally can talk to animals and once spoke with a tree. In adulthood, Laurence and Patricia will struggle with their feelings for each other and with their conflicting ideas about […]

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2/10/2016 's CBR8 Review No:8 |


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