Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Protect your noodle at all costs

The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage by Drew Magary

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The body is the instrument of our hold on the world. ― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex CBR15Bingo: Hold Steady square. This has been on my TBR list for a while. I loosely followed Drew Magary, starting with his annual takedown/tribute to Williams Sonoma Christmas catalog and with the occasionally Pajiba Love link to Deadspin (RIP). When I found out he’d had a brush with death, I did a quick scan of news articles to find out what the hell had happened to a […]

interesting book that was endlessly distracting because of one smallll thing…

The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage by Drew Magary

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Magary has it right when, almost at the end of the novel, he’s finding a therapist. He breaks the fourth wall (as he often does) and says something akin to, “Reader, you’ve probably been saying since the beginning FIND A THERAPIST.” And look, I’m not going to throw away an entire novel’s worth of exposition and self reflection based on one sentiment, but on the other hand it’s entirely too distracting to read hundreds of pages of slow, agonized recovery that includes permanent disability and […]

What It Means to Survive

The Night the Lights Went Out by Drew Magary

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: Representation. Drew Magary writes about suffering a traumatic brain injury and adjusting to the ill effects of it that left him non-able bodied.  There are very few books I’d recommend to people across my family/friends spectrum. This is one. Perhaps it is one of one. Drew Magary is one of my favorite writers but it sure as hell didn’t start out that way. At Kissing Suzy Kolber, I found him to be a loud-mouthed bully, the kind of guy who thinks […]

Sarah Huff needed a gun.

Point B by Drew Magary

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It’s 2030 and humans, through specially developed phones, can instantly teleport anywhere in the world. Our story begins with someone using this technology to real world cyberbully (by specifically teleporting into their house and bullying them) someone into suicide through a terror campaign. We jump from there a few years later as the victim of this abuse’s sister is beginning school at an elite prep school. She instantly falls in love with her new roommate, who it turns out is the daughter of the CEO […]

All you’re getting from me this year is a half Cannonball, so it may as well be for a Magary book.

Point B by Drew Magary

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I really want to review this book but have struggled to write anything lately. I’m such a fan of Drew and want to throw my support his way, but I just can’t make the words come out. I’m clearly not going to reach my cannonball goal this year for the first time ever. New goal: Half Cannonball! I’ve been a big fan of Drew’s for a while. I loved The Hike, I liked The Postmortal, his annual Willams Sonoma takedown is always good for a […]

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. But they’d still be charged. (CBR12Bingo2: I wish)

Point B by Drew Magary

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This is a really weird book for the “I Wish” square on its face, given that it involves a dead sister, an alcoholic best friend, a stalker, an even larger economic equality gap, and the ennui that comes from the hedonic treadmill rendering the magical prosaic. But you guys, it’s about teleportation! Can you imagine getting BORED of being able to instantaneously port to a tropical island? To hem and haw about having an outdated teleportation device, or having to pay a teleportation bill in […]



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