Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

On the Edge – Edward St Aubyn (1998)

On the Edge by Edward St Aubyn

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There’s a very special kind of American hokum that might be completely unreadable by foreign-born observers. California New Age culture is probably one of them. For one, even to people not from California, there’s something completely bizarre and opaque about it that’s hard to translate even to the Midwest or East Coast. So for a British writer to take a stab at it, especially one not particularly associated with the US (like Christopher Isherwood or Aldous Huxley was) then the job is even harder. The […]

Unnecessary “I liked this” headline

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As a reviewer, I get to a point with authors I love — and as much as I hate to segregate out certain authors, this is especially pronounced with genre authors who proudly inhabit a particular niche — where I can’t really go too deeply into what I love about their books without feeling like I am repeating myself. I talk about how and why they excel at characterization, the themes that they tend to explore really well, their excellent scene-setting, reliable pacing, and effective […]

And the medal for consistency goes to Ilona Andrews

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4.5 stars In the UF/PNR realm, I can’t think of a more reliable author team than Ilona Andrews. They consistently tell witty, exciting, and inventive stories that also manage to keep my crabby inner feminist satisfied by their refreshing lack of misogyny and even casual sexism. They manage this with their (seemingly, through it shouldn’t be) astonishing ability to create female protagonists and side characters who are complex, compelling, and above all, distinguishable from each other. Just like real people! I am pretty sure I […]

Good news, everyone! I think I’m psychic now! #BookExchange

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UPDATED 12/13/14 — see note below A couple of weeks ago, I splurged and ordered a David Bowie Pizza John t-shirt from DFTBA.com in honor of Pizzamas (raise your hands if you actually understood the contents of that sentence), so when I checked my mail this afternoon (after getting to leave work three hours early–wooo!), and there was a key in there indicating I had a package, my first thought was YAY PIZZA JOHN. And then I got confused, because it was from Amazon, and I […]



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