Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“Because her general taste appalled him, it annoyed him that he himself constituted one of her favorites.”

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

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Jason Taverner, like me, is in his early forties. However, unlike me, he is an international superstar. Somewhere between a Kardashian, Jimmy Fallon, and Kelly Clarkson, Taverner is lab created to be a charismatic talk show hosting crooner. He is a “Six” – a special kind of genetically modified cool guy. There’s a schmooze-ness to him, sure, but he is undoubtedly magnetic. That’s why the whole world knows who he is, and why they buy his records. Until they don’t.  One day Taverner is minding […]

The Best Dick is Mysterious Dick

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

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I’ve read a few PKD novels by now, and now my favorite by far is Ubik. It is a true mindfreak of a novel. It’s got all of the stuff that makes a great science fiction novel – interesting technology and culture, real philosophical questions, and plain old entertainment. I ditched my plans this weekend to read this whole thing in two days. I can’t stop thinking about it. The story starts simply enough. Down-on-his-luck Joe Chip works as an anti-psychic. That may sound exciting, […]

Very meta

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick

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The Man in the High Castle is a speculative narrative – what would the world be like if the allied forces lost WWII? What would a life under a Nazi Germany and Japanese regime look like? The story loosely revolves around Frank, a pawn show owner is San Fran who trades in authentic American memorabilia. He is also, secretly, Jewish. Though he’s changed his physical appearance and voice so as to go undetected. Going into this novel, I hadn’t seen the TV series so cannot […]

Philip K Dick

Collected Stories Volume 3 by Philip K Dick

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“Professor Anthony Douglas lowered gratefully into his red-leather easy chair and sighed. A long sigh, accompanied by a labored removal of his shoes and numerous grunts as he kicked them into the corner. He folded his hands across his ample middle and lay back, eyes, closed. ‘Tired?’ Laura Douglas, asked turning from the kitchen stove a moment, her dark eyes sympathetic.” In this third volume of Philip K Dick stories, we get a similarly varied collection of space, future, technology, magic, dimensional, and other kinds […]

Spring Cleaning

The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave

The Lemming Condition by Alan Arkin

Trump and Populism by Michael Kazin

How Do We Look by Mary Beard

Family Life by Russel Banks

Last Train from Perdition by Robert McCammon

The Rule of St Benedict by St Benedict

Theodore Roosevelt by Louis Auchincloss

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The Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave “A young boy climbs a riverbank.” This tour memoir and more or less book of poetry opens up with the image above of a young boy climbing up a riverbank and feeling like he has a brush with a train passing close by. I was girding myself for the possibility that I had decided to read a book that Nick Cave write after the death of his son in a not impossibly similar situation. That would happen a […]

Give PKD a Pass and Read Some Octavia Butler, Save Yourself!!

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick

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Honestly a disappointing and often infuriating read. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is Volume Five of Philip K Dick’s collected short stories, covering 25 stories from the mid-60s to early 80s, and is also the title of the most famous story in the collection. I had read this before maybe seven years ago and have been carrying it around since. As part of my effort to weed out my fiction shelves, I figured I would re-read it and see if it was a […]



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