Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Please Search Hand-Pulled Noodles Near Me

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

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After the ghost kitchen they worked at is shut down, a group of robots decide to start up their own restaurant serving hand-pulled noodles, but anti-robot prejudice threatens their success. Immediately after reading this book, I looked up the nearest place I could get my hands on hand-pulled noodles, so in that regard this has been an absolute success. I have never had them before but I am somehow craving them anyway. I picked up this book because it’s been so highly recommended on Cannonball […]

“If I were to live here in Cardiff, by the sea, I think that another self would emerge in me. My soul.”

Cardiff, By the Sea by Joyce Carol Oates

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Joyce Carol Oates presents four uneasy novellas of suspense, all of which are centered around a woman in peril, often from the male forces in her life. Cardiff, by the Sea – 3.5 stars Clare, an academic who was adopted as a toddler, returns to her unknown past when she unexpectedly inherits a house from her birth grandmother, but what she learns about her birth family leaves her unmoored. I loved the prose in this novella (as I did in all of them), as well […]

“The dream dies. Which leaves you with a choice: you can settle for reality, or you can go off, like a fool, and dream another dream.”

Heartburn: A Novel by Nora Ephron

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Heartburn is a short humorous novel about an unfunny topic — a marriage falling apart. It is based on true events — Ephron’s marriage to Carl Bernstein and his infidelity. The main character and narrator is Rachel Samstat, a cookbook author and TV personality married to Mark Feldman, a prominent syndicated journalist. Both Rachel and Mark are on their second marriages, and Rachel is pregnant with their second child when she discovers Mark’s infidelity. This novel is about her reaction to that discovery and the […]

This book also has a character called “the cutie bandit,” which is amazing.

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

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When I tell you I was not interested in this book at all and then I zoomed through it in a day and a half. It was a book club pick, and I’d read and liked/loved I think three of her books before this one, but the synopsis just didn’t call to me. But, book club pick, so I reserved it from the library. This book is the epitome of what I mean when I say that writing style is the most important thing in […]

“…there are two things I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.”

Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki

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I learned about this book and its author from a recent Guardian interview. In it, Asako Yuzuki reveals that when she wrote both Butter and her novel Hooked, (English translation due out this month), she was very angry, especially about sexism and fat shaming in Japan. While Yuzuki’s books have been very popular in Japan and around the world, they have also been criticized in Japan for being too feminist. I found this novel to be a real eye opener. While I had been aware […]

Three sci-fi books making me think about robots and AI

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

Rose/House by Arkady Martine

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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The end of January to the very beginning of March has had the good fortune to have three excellent books looking at robots, AI, sentience, autonomy, finding meaning, and limitations on the flawed way humanity has programmed robots/AI.  While setting up this post, I just realized all the author’s first name start with A.  Huh, kind of interesting. First up was a novella by Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle.  This is the most fun and lighthearted of the bunch.  It is the year 2064, a few years […]



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