Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Unnecessary back story

Shift by Hugh Howey

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Bingo Square: Politics (senators, congressman, terrible people bringing about the end of the world) In 2049, congressman Donald Keene is recruited by Senator Paul Thurman to help build a containment system for a new nuclear waste facility. Donald has known Thurman for years, dating his daughter Anna in college. She will be on the team too, along with Donald’s friend Mick. The Democratic National Convention takes place at the site, just as nuclear bombs are detonated over the US. Those present file into the silos […]

I Want to go Outside

Wool by Hugh Howey

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Bingo square: Dwelling At some point in the future, humanity has been doomed and the last remnants of it live below ground in the silo. 144 floors, ranging from up top, through the mids, to the down deep. No one goes outside. And if you ask, you get your wish but can never come back. It’s a death sentence, as the outside is toxic. The small view the inhabitants of the silo can see through a view screen becomes corroded over time, and those who […]

Kind of a letdown to a strong start

Dust by Hugh Howey

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[Read as an ebook from the public library] NANOBOTS. I’m going to be honest – I skipped a bunch of pages in this one. My affection for Wool had started wearing off by this time and not even Juliette’s return could pull me back into the narrative enough to get me fully invested. I still like the overall world here, but there’s just so many holes after Shift. A lot of the menace of the outside world is gone, the rituals of IT are no […]

A middling middle

Shift by Hugh Howey

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[Read as an ebook from the public library] Note: This edition is the collection of three novellas. This is essentially the prequel to Wool, and serves to explain how and why the silos were built and what has happened to the outside world by the time of Wool. It takes place in two different timelines — one follows Donald Keene, a young Georgia congressman in 2049, tapped to help construct a new nuclear waste storage facility in the area outside Atlanta. The other follows Troy, a silo […]

A kind of hopeful dystopia

Wool by Hugh Howey

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[Read as an ebook from the public library.] Note: This is the omnibus version, which collects the original five novellas into one edition. I didn’t expect this book to hit me in quite the ways it did. This has clearly been the year of sci-fi for me and I’ve run the gamut from Becky Chambers loveliness to the quirkiness of Murderbot to this, the comparative grimdark of the Silo. I usually don’t go in for post-apocalyptic literature, because I don’t need to be more depressed, […]

Video Games and the “Real World”

Press Start to Play by Daniel H. Wilson, John Joseph Adams, Ernest Cline

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Bingo Review 2: Shelfie I honestly have no idea how long Press Start to Play has been on my literal TBR shelf, but it’s been a while. I figured this was as good a reason as any to finally pick it up, especially since I actually broke down and bought a Nintendo Switch Light a few weeks ago. I’ve never been much of a gamer; I didn’t grow up with it really, unless you count the educational stuff like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers. I […]



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