Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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No books were harmed, this time

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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I was 16 when I read The Handmaid’s Tale and I was just beginning my love affair with dystopian tales. I don’t think I liked bleak stories all that much growing up, but man, as soon as I read Fahrenheit 451 they were all I wanted. Give me some of that sweet, sweet harrowing future straight to the veins, and anything like it. When a friend gifted me The Handmaid’s Tale, I thought I’d love it. I read it voraciously, in about two days, and then, enraged, threw it against a wall. If you know the end of that book, […]

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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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10/7/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No: 24 |

Don’t Take The Memories

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

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The Memory Police is the kind of dystopia I like. No Hunger Games-esque confrontations with the Big Bad. No sadistic rolling around in the concept (aka “torture porn”). No forsaking character for story. The characters drive this story. The society they live in impacts them and they adapt. It’s a well-told tale. I would have loved to have read this book in its original language. I feel like there are probably subtleties I could have picked up on. But what I did get was good enough. Yoko Ogawa is a talented writer. She’s an excellent sensualist and she has to be for […]

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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9/24/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No: 96 |

Under His Eye

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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Aww. This was so good. I think Atwood did a wonderful job of showing us how Gilead came to be, how it was for those who lived there, and how it looked to others from the outside. Instead of staying with one POV throughout the story, Atwood allows us to to get fully immerse in Gilead via the POVs of a young girl named Agnes, an older girl named Daisy, and the fearsome Aunt Lydia. The character development works for these three characters as well as the secondary characters such as Becka, the other Aunts, and the loathsome Commander Judd. […]

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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9/16/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No: 224 |

California here we come; right back where we started from

California by Edan Lepucki

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Some dystopia novels are trying to be literature, some are trying to be good trashy fun, some are trying to be profound and fail terribly, some are just way off the mark. Then there’s the category I’d put California in, which is the kind of book that doesn’t really seem sure of what it’s doing, and thus never really makes a mark on the genre or the reader. Meet Cal and Frida! They’re a typical 20-something couple in the 2050s just trying to make it in a shack in the woods so they don’t have to face the brutal reality […]

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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9/6/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No: 19 |

Everything Is Fine

The Warehouse by Rob Hart

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The best dystopias are the ones that take the world as is and tilt it just a little off its axis in a realistic way. Octavia Butler’s Parable duology took the circumstances of white supremacy and income inequality and added a heat-ravaged climate so devastating that it fractured global society. Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America took the anti-Semitism of the WASP-dominated 1930s United States and added the specter of Europe’s fascist politics made manifest in a Nazi sympathizer being elected President. Those two have always spoken to me more than 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 and I think they have more to say. The Warehouse does the same […]

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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9/5/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No: 89 |

Gold Fame Citrus

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

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I’m not sure about this book. It took me a long time to read (nearly six weeks) and I stopped mid-way and didn’t touch it for nearly three weeks, until finishing the last 150 pages in one night. In general, I’m not averse to unlikable protagonists, end of the world settings, or literary prose, but there were times with this book where I really felt myself questioning whether or not I do like those things, or if I just want to like those things so that I can claim to be a certain type of person who likes those things. […]

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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8/18/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No: 17 |

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Nora Roberts-fied

Year One by Nora Roberts

Of Blood and Bone by Nora Roberts

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CBR11 #2: Year One by Nora Roberts My first Nora Roberts! The two books were a gift from my friend who’s a huge Nora Roberts fan, and she thought Year One could be a good entry point because I’m a real sucker for dystopia fiction. It starts out with a family vacation in Scotland, when a peasant is shot and falls right in the middle of a stone circle, and its blood seeps into the frosted ground. What appears to be a regular hunting expedition turns deadly days later when the shooter is afflicted by an incurable disease that spreads like wildfire […]

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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6/30/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No: 3 |

Why settle for just one apocalypse when you can have two?

Deadline (Newsflesh, No 2) by Mira Grant

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Warning: Spoilers for Feed, the first book in the Newsflesh series are below. Click away now if you haven’t read it. The aftermath of the events of Feed have really done a number on Shaun Mason. Shooting your beloved sister as she turns into a zombie will do that to you. It’ll also have her setting up shop in your head for you to talk aloud to, lending credence to the popular theory that you’ve well and truly lost your marbles. But what Shaun hasn’t lost is the need to avenge Georgia’s death, and while her killer has already taken […]

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 "Why settle for just one apocalypse when you can have two?"

6/12/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No: 19 |


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