Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Those Who Can Do, Can’t Teach

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

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I’ll admit to some prejudice to reviewing this. While I think Mr. Card is an exceptional writer, I find his homophobic comments hard to take. But this was on my list of books that beginning writers should consume, so I bought a used copy  to learn something. As with other books written over thirty years ago, the section on the writing business at the end is outdated and totally skippable. But the basics of world and story construction are helpful. I found his section on […]

Rooter was at once the most difficult and the most helpful of the pequeninos.

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

Dakota by Kathleen Norris

Out of Sight by Elmore Leonard

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

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Speaker for the Dead – 4/5 Stars This is the direct sequel to Ender’s Game, in that it’s an Ender book, doesn’t stay on Earth with Bean and Peter like other later books, and is the book that Card wrote right after Ender’s Game. It’s also one of those books I skipped for the longest time. I read the first book in high school 25 years ago and have read all the Ender’s Shadow books at least once. I think when I read the premise of this book I […]

“I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one. Or at least as close as we’re going to get.”

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card

Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card

Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card

First Meetings by Orson Scott Card

A War of Gifts by Orson Scott Card

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I am rereading all of  the Ender books and reading a handful for the first time. I am not really interesting in investigating Card as a person because he’s not a very good person, but in the novels themselves. Sometimes there’s carry over between the things that makes Card undesirable, but much of the time, the novels are wholly separate.   Ender’s Game – 5/5 Stars I first read this book in high school, and I had no clue what it was all about going […]

The enemy’s gate is down

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

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This was the book my library chose to have as our Teen Book Club pick for the summer.  It was my suggestion, both because it’s an awesome book and because we had multiple copies in our library.  I was supposed to have a grand total of *one* teen show up today, and instead I got *zero.* Sadness.  This was one of my favorite books in high school, enough that I read the sequels, which are weird AF.  (My suggestion: skip them, and read the Ender’s […]

Not what I was expecting, and not in a good way

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I’m a fan of Ender’s Game, so I assumed I was a fan of Orson Scott Card.  This may have been a false assumption. I picked up Enchantment because it looked interesting, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, and it looked different from my last Orson Scott Card disappointment.  No awkward religious stuff here, I thought. I thought wrong. Enchantment is billed as a fantasy, as a retelling of Sleeping Beauty.  But we open on a Russian boy in 1975 converting to Judaism to escape Russia. […]

The start of a very weird series

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So I was going along, listening to the book, and it was all fine, and then all of a sudden, I came to a realization.  “Wait a minute, this is JESUS!” Yes, this all seems to boil down to a second coming of Christ (or Christ-like character.) (Or something to do with Mormons. I’m not sure.)   This is an alternate history of Frontier era of America.  From what I quickly read of the introduction before I started, I knew there would be some differences, […]



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