Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Lost and Found

The Terror by Dan Simmons

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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Life has an odd way of making things come together sometimes. Either that, or I simply wasn’t paying attention when I ended up accidentally reading two books about the lost Franklin expedition at the same time. Both books are fiction, which means that they take their own liberties with the truth; after all, not much is known about the exact fate of the men aboard the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus.  What we do know is this: explorer Sir John Franklin, experienced but not […]

How Would You Handle Being Taken to a Different Time?

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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Best for: Those who enjoy a little bit of science fiction and a lot of philosophy. In a nutshell: The UK government has a time machine, but instead of traveling into the future, they’ve decided to travel to the past to bring four people to current time to see how they can integrate into the modern era. Worth quoting: “Who thinks their job is on the side of right? They fed us all poison from a bottle marked ‘prestige’ and we developed a high tolerance […]

Slightly out of place, in every way

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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I saw a recommendation for Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, and I got it from the interlibrary loan in amongst some verrrrryyyy long books (Why does nobody edit Brandon Sanderson?!?). I couldn’t contemplate bringing a 5lb book on the plane, so grabbed Bradley’s novel thinking it was the right length for a 3 day work trip. What happened, in the end, was me having to caution myself to slow down so I would have enough book to last the whole trip – this funny, […]

Historical fiction, time travel, romance, memoir, this book has it all.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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I finished this last week and couldn’t say immediately if I liked it or not but I have been thinking about it every day since then, and I think that’s really the tell. I picked this up without knowing anything about it, except that it was probably about time travel? Anyway, I was surprised on page 1 when I discovered that this is apparently about time travel and the Franklin expedition?? I’ve read The Terror and watched the miniseries, and generally feel familiar with and […]

public libraries to the rescue

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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Fun story: this book is massively backlogged at all my many libraries, but lo and behold it was just…sitting on the shelf at one of the local libraries that’s in consortium with my actual local (well, parent’s local) library. For some context, the library that had it is adjacent to another district that is much better funded with better schools, etc, which is a roundabout way of saying that I felt a bit like I should check there more often for books I’m searching for. […]

Time, Time, Time to See What’s Become of Me

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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The Ministry of Time is structured as a confessional narrative from the perspective of a rather ordinary British civil servant entrusted with an extraordinary responsibility. The U.K. has been cautiously experimenting with time travel, and they’ve brought five people from the past to present-day London, hoping to observe the toll that time travel and living in an unfamiliar era take on their bodies. Our unnamed narrator, a half-English, half-Cambodian second-generation immigrant, has been deemed a good fit to serve as a bridge for one of […]



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