Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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1984/Julia

1984 by George Orwell

Julia by Sandra Newman

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Over the years I have read 1984 maybe half a dozen times, always for class-related assignments when I was a student or when I was a teacher. It has probably been over 20 years since my last re-read, and I’m glad I picked it up again before reading Sandra Newman’s Julia, a take on 1984 from the point of view of Winston Smith’s lover. I have always found 1984 to be a challenging read; dystopian fiction is unsettling and the end of 1984 is tragic. […]

Hold On Tight and Don’t Look Back

The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: California by Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, Becky Cloonan

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To put it as clearly as possible… There is something wrong with you and we are going to fix it. I’ve been having kind of a Danger Days summer. This following my Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge spring and my Black Parade winter. What can I say, when I discover a band I am sometimes prone to musically hyperfixate. So the thing about this review is that it is taking quite a lot of self restraint to keep it as a review of the book […]

“There is more than one kind of freedom. . . . Freedom to and freedom from.”

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

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I’ve had The Handmaid’s Tale on my shelf for many months now, but I’ve been avoiding starting it. I wanted to read it, but I felt like I had to be in a certain (untroubled) emotional state to face it, and that’s been a tall order these past couple of years. I recently braced myself and got down to business. Of course I already knew the premise: In the near-future, after the U.S. government has been overthrown and replaced by a patriarchal, Cristhian theonomy, women […]

Perhaps all humans are lonely. At least potentially.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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CBR13 BINGO: Book Club (Obama’s Summer Reading List 2021 & Good Morning America’s Book Club) Ishiguro writes the kind of books that you can’t discuss too much without giving away the plot. In the most simple synopsis: Klara is an artificially intelligent robot that can be purchased to be a child’s bff. Initially showcased in a storefront window, she is soon supplanted by newer models and relegated to lesser and lesser positions in the store. While languishing in a shady corner in the back of […]

Please note you have seen this author before, just under different names. But know that they still love their minions who read their novels. 

Into the Real by Z Brewer

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cbr13bingo They/She/He Into the Real fits the They/She/He category on at least two levels. First, Z Brewer goes by they/them. They have had a journey of self-discovery since their Vladimir Todd series days to this most recent novel. (I am currently reading another book by them that came before this with another name).  And due to the main character, Quinn, taking a journeying to find their own gender identity, eventually learning the word genderqueer, also allows it to fit this category. When Quinn finds themselves bouncing […]

Things are different in Wales

Ivon by Michael Aylwin

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

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CBRBingo – Sportsball and People As I read Ivon, I couldn’t help thinking that this would be a much better book if Jasper Fforde had written it.  Fforde is a master of taking a crazy premise and populating it with such skillfully drawn living breathing humans that the setting becomes real. This is Aylwin’s first novel, and he isn’t there yet. In the world of Ivon, sport is everything.  Set in our future, after a series of pandemics that killed off all but the fittest, almost all of humanity […]



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