Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Personhood in Sci-Fi

Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon

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Volatile Memory fulfills the “purple” square on CBR17 bingo. Generally speaking, I don’t consider myself a sci-fi reader, but Volatile Memory kept coming across my feeds because it’s sapphic and I finally gave into the promo, and I’m glad I did because this ended up being a really interesting story. I’d put it in the same conversations as books like Automatic Noodle and The Stars Too Fondly for the ways it explores transness and gender through presentation as well as whether memories make a person […]

Life is always happening and has happened and will happen

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan

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One of Chekhov’s earliest stories was a parody of mental arithmetic questions asked of schoolchildren, of which Chekhov’s question 7 is typical: Wednesday, June 17, 1881, a train had to leave station A at 3am in order to reach station B at 11pm; just as the train was about to depart, however, an order came that the train had to reach station B by 7pm. Who loves longer, a man or a woman? Who? You, me, a Hiroshima resident or a slave labourer? And why […]

Not bad for a book that made me almost go tail feather over tea kettle!

Safer Places by Kit Anderson

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My usual library run was happening (I was picking up a couple of interlibrary loans), when I turned and there was this book, on a display behind me, called Safer Places (by Kit Anderson). At first, it wasn’t anything special, its cover was dark and the rest of the books blended in and it was “too close” to the checkout counter. The second time I went in (more interlibrary) I turned and almost ran into that display (I said it’s close) and I heard the […]

Basically a digital scrapbook murder mystery

These Toxic Things by Rachel Howzell Hall

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I’m just going to start this one by saying that my review is full of spoilers. I don’t know how to talk about this book without ruining it! I’m not sure if anyone reading this review wants to read the book, so I’ll do a little intro, then move onto the spoilers with plenty of warning. The main character is a young woman named Mickie Lambert. I had a realllly hard time connecting to her. She’s in her early 20’s living above her parent’s garage. […]

Memories and Grandmother Hazel

Witch Hazel by Molly Idle

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Witch Hazel by Molly Idle seemed like it was going to be something other than it was by the cover and what I had quickly read about it. I had no idea I would need tissues! You see, this is about a young girl and her grandmother and the beautiful times they have. Or had. As you see how the grandmother, Hazel, slowly starts to change as the seasons change. Without coming right out and saying it, you know that she has passed by the […]

But the Habits of Memory Created All Kinds of False Harbours.

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

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Good Lord, I got all excited over the bingo thing, and wouldn’t you know it, I get hammered by work commitments! So it looks like this year I’ll be posting bingo-reviews late, and my reviews for the Hugo Best Novel noms after I voted   Oh well, oh well.   A Desolation Called Peace was one of those books up for the Hugo Award for Best Novel this year. And just like A Memory Called Empire before it, I think it’ll take home the top gong. […]



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