Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“My book-ordering history is definitely going to get me flagged by some evil government algorithm. Lots and lots of books about Vichy France and the French Resistance and more books than any civilian could possibly need about spy craft and fascism. Luckily, there is a Jean Rhys novel in there and a book for Eli called How to Draw Robots. That’ll throw them off the scent.”

Weather by Jenny Offill

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Jenny Offill’s latest exercise in approaching anxiety with compassion, Weather, kicks off right before the 2016 election. While she isn’t that exact- you come to realization through context clues- the time and feeling is accurate and thick in the air. Just like in Dept. of Speculation, Offill packs years worth of pathos into a collection close to just 200 pages. Her economy of vocabulary is something that I strive to possess. Our narrator is worried about wasting time; she sits on an unfinished masters while answering […]

Is love really the answer in the end?

Dimension W, vol. 16 by Yuji Iwahara

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I did a quick check and I’m a little surprised that I haven’t reviewed a volume of this series before now; I’ve certainly read them all but somehow not reviewed one until the final 16th volume. Dimension W is a manga series, and there was also an anime that covered basically the first two story arcs. The gist is that in the future, the world now relies on energy drawn from Dimension W although what the dimension is and how it works is not well […]

Let Your Life Be a Counter Friction to Stop the Machine

This is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook by Extinction Rebellion

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Welcome to the Anthropocene era, the fossil fuel-powered nightmare of our own making. Our hot and crowded planet has hit Defcon 3. Right now, a record number of fires is burning down the Brazilian rainforest, threatening three million endemic plant and animal species. Mass bleaching in the heat-stressed Great Barrier Reef has reduced baby coral by 89% since 2016. Okjökull is the first (but not the last) glacier to disappear from Iceland. Last month Paris hit 109º, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the city, […]

It Doesn’t Look Good, Folks

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells

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BINGO: Science Best for: Those looking for specific clear descriptions of what the earth may look like at different levels of warming. In a nutshell: Science writer Wallace-Wells looks at what has happened so far, what is likely to happen, and what the greater implicates will be as related to climate change. Worth quoting: “Almost regardless of your politics or your consumption choices, the wealthier you are, the larger your carbon footprints.” “More than 140 million people in just three regions of the world will […]

The Raft of Medusa

The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells

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Read as part of CBR 11: Science David Wallace-Wells wants us to avoid the trap of fatalism when it comes to climate change. Fatalism is a form of denialism. I get that. I appreciate it. But man, it’s tough to come away from reading this book feeling anything but pessimistic about the future at best and nihilistic at worse. This book is divided into two sections: the potential scientific effects in the near future due to global warming, and how we process that ethically, politically, […]

“I can’t help but sense that desperation is right around the bend.”

Dry by Shusterman, Neal

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cbr11bingo – Listicle! (Dry is featured on this list of 2018 must-read teen fiction) Drought isn’t a new phenomenon to Alyssa or anyone else in California, but the ante is upped when one day the taps run dry.  Quickly termed the “tap-out” by local news, it doesn’t take long for stores to run out of bottled water and for people to start freaking out.  In this environmental disaster book, Neal Shusterman and his son Jarrod explore the possibilities of how chaos could unfold in California […]



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