Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Et al

To Hold up the Sky by Cixin Liu

The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust

Anything for Billy by Larry McMurtry

Dance to the Music of Time: The Valley of Bones by Anthony Powell

Dance to the Music of Time: The Soldier's Art by Anthony Powell

Dance to the Music of Time: The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

by Leave a Comment

To Hold up the Sky – 3/5 I really like the Cixin Liu novels I’ve read, and have felt that the short story collections are a mixed bag. The issue tends to be a lack of closing confidence. There’s also some cool premises, and some interesting premises explored in strange ways.  The opening story “The Village Teacher” splits the narrative between a simple country teacher and an intergalactic war, and the way in which these get resolved is really interesting.  Another story takes a huge […]

Green Mars

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

by Leave a Comment

This is the second book in the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. This book takes place a few generations after the first book, although because of longevity technology in medical science a handful of the original colonizing crew are still alive. The novel looks at Mars now in the beginning stages of terraforming as the local and colonial politics shape the various decisions being made planet-wide. Earth is in a kind of turmoil because of overpopulation, stagnant economic growth, and political strife. Mars on […]

My general feelings for this book can be summed up as UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) by Kim Stanley Robinson

by Leave a Comment

I think I am allergic to Kim Stanley Robinson. Loved the idea behind this book, extremely disliked the execution. I tried reading 2312 years back, and similarly, any cool tingly science feelings I got from that book (which if I’m remembering right, starts with a moving, mechanized city on Mercury) was completely murdered by the boring as hell characters and lack of emotional through-line. I just remember the boredom with that one, but here I was not only bored but frustrated and annoyed by KSR’s attempt […]

Half Read but Still Reviewable

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

by Leave a Comment

Just for clarity and full disclosure, I only managed to get through about the first 100 pages of what is 563 page novel before I got distracted and then had to return it to the library. But I still got enough to form some impressions, even if I’m honest, I may not have truly been able to really read the whole thing even if there hadn’t been another hold on the book and I’d have kept it a while longer. The Ministry for the Future […]

Mars was empty before we came.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

by Leave a Comment

So this is the first novel in a series of three novels and a collection of short stories. The novels get progressively longer and this one already clocks in at 575 pages. So all told the series comprises about 2000 pages. The novel is an expansive granular-level investigation into a Mars colonization project which would start this current decade and one of the central figures of the project is my age — I mean literally — in that he was born in 1982 (I was […]

We don’t know whether this is a dream or a memory.

Space Invaders by Nona Fernandez

The Promise by Silvina Ocampo

The Fool by Anne Serre

A Short, Sharp Shock by Kim Stanley Robinson

Welcome to America by Linda Bostrum Knausgaard

Invisible Kingdom vol 1 by G Willow Wilson

Beyonders vol 1 by Paul Jenkins

Infinite Dark vol 1 by Ryan Cady

by Leave a Comment

Space Invaders – 4/5 stars This short novel from Chile takes places in late 70s and early 80s in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship in which tens of thousands of dissenters were placed in concentration camps, killed outright, or both, often having their entire existence bureaucratically eradicated in the process. It was common practice bodies to be burned or dumped in the ocean as well. This novel is a novel of childhood as kids through a main narrator try to make sense of their world. […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo