Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Gateway to Science Fiction and Octavia Butler

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

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Cbr13bingo Gateway, Bingo #9-11 (horizontal, vertical and inner square) Parable of the Sower (1993) is an astoundingly prescient work of science fiction. Octavia Butler (1947-2006), winner of Nebula, Hugo and MacArthur prizes, tells the story of hyperempath Lauren Olamina in mid-2020s California. I reviewed this novel for the 2015 Cannonball Read, and I do believe that it (or really any written by Butler) would be a Gateway to reading more sci-fi/fantasy, and I hope a Gateway to reading more by Butler. Butler writes powerfully and […]

Another story I didn’t know existed, a perfect author for the Gateway square

A Good Heretic (Wayfarers #0.5) by Becky Chambers

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There are a handful of authors that I am simply delighted Cannonball Read has put on my reading radar. Becky Chambers is absolutely one of those. Her The Wayfarers series helped to cement for me my enjoyment of space based science fiction, while simultaneously reaffirming that one doesn’t need to rely on the hero’s journey in order to write excellent genre fiction. My favorite genre books are all character driven, and that is just the kind of exploration and survival stories at which Chambers excels. […]

Dancing the Entropic Two-Step

Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe by Brian Greene

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Although my main interests have always been history, languages, and cultural studies, I somehow also developed a love of astronomy early on. Due to my lack of interest in maths, chemistry, and physics in every other aspect than cosmology, I was however satisfied with reading popular science books about the universe and following the scientific progress in a very casual way. About 15 years ago, I read The Elegant Universe, in which the physicist and string theorist Brian Greene explains string theory in as accessible […]

Perfectly serviceable humorous memoir about someone who seems to have his head on straight despite ingesting a truly scary amount of drugs

Yearbook by Seth Rogen

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Gateway: into one of the only non-fiction genres I read, “memoirs written by comedic writers.” This is a great one to start with, seeing as how there’s more understanding and context to Rogen’s adventures than some of the older memoirs that might not have aged 100% well. For example, I appreciate very much that Rogen prefaces some of his drug escapades with the disclaimer that he gets away with stuff because he is a white man. So ymmv but for me this book was 50% […]

Lee Smith and friend

Oral History by Lee Smith

The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed by Lee Smith

Sweet Hollow by Lou Crabtree

Fancy Strut by Lee Smith

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Cbr13Bingo – Gateway Oral History – 5/5 Stars I don’t know what they did to this book, but the most recent covers are terrible. I love Lee Smith, and I like a lot of fiction that looks like the recent covers of these books, and they are NOT the same. This book is devilish. You should know that going in. Our protagonist is a contemporary woman living in a small town in the far southwestern mountains of Virginia. This panhandle part of Virginia is so […]



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