Cannonball Read 11

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Victims of our emotions and wishful thinking.

Crosstalk by Connie Willis

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This is another comedy of errors/romantic comedy in the vein of To Say Nothing of the Dog, but not one tied to a historical/time travel narrative. In that way, it’s also quite similar to Bellwether. Briddy works for a global communications technology company and the word is out that she and her fiance, one of the junior vice president types in the company are about to be engaged. Before they get engaged though, her boyfriend has asked to her have a EED, an empathetic implant that supposedly allows connected pairs to grow emotionally faster and more clearly.  She is hesitant […]

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9/26/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:537 |

Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

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I absolutely devoured Doomsday Book a few weeks ago in a matter of days, which at 600 pages, was a relatively fast pace. This book, 500 pages, similar in its conceit took me longer in terms of days and a lot longer in terms of energy spent. I languished with this one at times, and while I sometimes run cold with Willis, I was hoping for a similar set of reactions to the previous novel of hers that I read. So the conceit here is pretty much the same, we return to the world of Doomsday Book and Fire Watch […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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6/26/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:361 |

“You can’t go back,” Gilchrist said. “Haven’t you heard? We’re under quarantine, thanks to Mr. Dunworthy’s carelessness.”

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

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This is one of the first books in a very long time that I considered staying up well past my bedtime to continue reading, almost any of the given nights I was reading this. Usually I am very happy to settle down at my normal time without reading on. I tried reading this years ago and the mass market edition of the book was just too much. So if you don’t know about the Oxford Time Travel series by Connie Willis — which includes this book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Black Out, All Clear and the novella Firewatch….imagine […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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4/26/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:214 |

I looked that up one day in February, the day I went out to see where Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie was buried.

Lincoln's Dreams by Connie Willis

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I feel like maybe this is a fairly lost Connie Willis novel, where her career has been so defined by the infinite numbers of Hugo and Nebula Awards she has won, and of course the sheer heft and size of her large and longer novels. But I liked this one. It’s better than the other early short novels she wrote in the mid 1980s by a wide margin I feel. It also just happens to coincide with my growing up and current life in some funny ways. If you grow up in Virginia, especially in my era (born in the […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "I looked that up one day in February, the day I went out to see where Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie was buried."

4/7/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:168 |

Too Much to Say About the Cat

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

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To Say Nothing of the Dog is not for those with short-attention spans. Though it eventually finds its way and becomes an absorbing, rollicking time travel story, the road there is bumpy and, even worse, frustratingly slow and irritating. For about 150 pages, almost a third of the book, Willis putters around with her narrative, allowing characters to waste time on sitcom-level miscommunications and incompetent decision-making. The book makes an impressive recovery, which explains and also justifies the high esteem it is held in among sci-fi fans and those who love time-travel stories. Ned Henry is a historian at a […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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2/12/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:3 |

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.

The Magic Barrel and Other Stories; Elric of Melibone; The Humbling; Joe Gould's Teeth; The Maltese Falcon; How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia; Happy Endings; DA; Fox 8; Snowpiercer; Embroideries; Tinkers by Bernard Malamud; Michael Moorcock; Philip Roth; Jill Lepore; Dashiell Hammett; Mohsin Hamid; Various Authors - Diana Schultz, Mike Mignola, Harvey Pekar et al; Connie Willis; Marjane Satrapi; George Saunders; Jacques Lob and Jean Marc Rochette; Paul Harding

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The Magic Barrel – 5/5 Stars This story collection came out in 1959 and contains the well known title story, but also has several other very good stories. It won the National Book Award as well. As I have previously stated in reviews, the age of the writer (here in a kind of debut effort) lends itself to an already mature and thoughtful work (this was also true for many of Raymond Chandler’s stories as well as the story collection A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley). The result here is  several stories that know what they’re doing and have a […]

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12/28/2018 's CBR10 Review No:483 |

Crosstalk irritates almost as much as having telepathy would

Crosstalk: A Novel by Connie Willis

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Does anyone else feel guilty giving bad reviews? This is the first actually bad review I’ll make for CBR and I feel strangely guilty. Anyway, with that over with: I thought this book sucked. I mean it just plain sucked (I’m channelling Homer Simpson here). Meant to be a satire examining overcommunication, technological obsession, the constant connectedness of modern society, AND romance and sci-fi novels, the book overshoots and manages to be mostly a satire of itself instead. On top of that, it’s also just slow and boring. I felt like it lasted forever and half of the things that […]

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4/19/2018 's CBR10 Review No:18 |

Five men, two boats, two dogs, and a troublesome cat.

Three Men in A Boat - To Say Nothing of the Dog by Jerome K. Jerome - Connie Willis

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I came across Connie Willis’ novel To Say Nothing of the Dog and it sounded like something I would enjoy, but figured I had best read Jerome K Jerome’s classic Three Men in a Boat first as it is the story that Willis riffs off of for her own. While Three Men in a Boat was amusing, I grew tired of it and had to force myself to slog through to get to the end. I think I would have enjoyed it more when I was younger but I am old and cranky and J. and his friends mostly just […]

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4/14/2018 's CBR10 Review No:7 |


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