Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Accept the things you cannot change or change the things you cannot accept?

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

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The Memory Police is an unsettling novel. The descriptions I read in advance made it sound a bit like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. It is a dystopian novel, and it does involve the authoritarian suppression of knowledge and personal freedom, but while I think of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as “political” science fiction, The Memory Police is not exactly that. The most disturbing acts of suppression in The Memory Police come from within the people themselves. The story is set on an island where some […]

A lovely choice for Mother’s Day but get your hankies out

Foster by Claire Keegan

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This novel, which is barely 100 pages long, packs an emotional wallop. Set in rural coastal Ireland, Foster is the story of an unnamed girl, age unknown (I’m guessing 7 or 8-ish), who abruptly finds herself living with an aunt and uncle one summer. In these few pages, Claire Keegan beautifully reveals the pain and longing of this child and of her relatives, and the roots of each. The novel opens with this girl and her father getting in the car on a Sunday morning […]

“Emotion check: Having someone else support your bad decisions feels kind of good”

Platform Decay: Murderbot Diaries Book 8 by Martha Wells

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This latest Murderbot installment is short (150 pages) but full of the snark and excitement one has come to expect from the series. It is missing the usual cast of characters (including my favorite ART) but it introduces some new ones and of course focuses on everyone’s favorite SecUnit. The action of Platform Decay occurs on a torus, that is, a space station ring surrounding a decaying planet. The torus is man-made and contains a variety of biomes, mining and farming zones, habitation areas and […]

A brilliant (but bloody) blend of history and fantasy

He Who Drowned the World: The Radiant Emperor Duology Book 2 by Shelley Parker-Chan

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This finale to Shelley Parker-Chan’s The Radiant Emperor Duology was outstanding. As with the first book (She Who Became the Sun), Parker-Chan focuses on the political and military machinations of a handful of ambitious individuals, each desperate for power and/or revenge. Parker-Chan has created complex characters who, despite their violent and frequently perverse proclivities, can also occasionally inspire pity. The court intrigues and double crossings had me on the edge of my seat, and the battles — sometimes featuring very hungry ghosts — were harrowing. […]

Lonely Angry Child

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

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A well-written and shockingly honest but very tough read for me. I just kept whip lashing between enraged and sad. Seventeen year old Waldo is a high school senior with a dead end job and not much else. She lives with her single mother who is never actually home. She is starving- for clothes, sugar, love, attention, anything… for her creative writing teacher Mr. Korgy. He complements her unique voice and seems to see her in a way nobody else does. He is twice her […]

The Outsiders

She Who Became the Sun: The Radiant Emperor Duology Book One by Shelley Parker-Chan

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Beginning in 1340s China, She Who Became the Sun opens with a 10 year old girl, never named, living in utter poverty in a small village. She has already lost her mother and several siblings to starvation. The girl, her father and an older brother named Zhu are the only survivors. Zhu was meant to be sent to a monastery when he was old enough, and a fortune teller predicted greatness for him, but for the little girl he predicted, literally, nothing. Yet the girl […]



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