Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Feelings, free will, and a robot adventure: CBR Bingo – Two heads are better than one, Bingo!

Cog by Greg Van Eekhout

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Completing the “Two heads are better than one” square fulfills my bingo column, “Cannonballer Says” to “Remix”, and gives me my first bingo!  I used my “Reader’s Choice” to replace “Remix” with “Classic”. Dome’Loki Greg van Eekhout is a local San Diego author who frequently does events at my favorite independent bookstore, Mysterious Galaxy.  He writes for both adult and middle grade audiences.  Greg’s two most recent books are middle grade and as a result, it has been great fun to take my kids with […]

Aging down the line

Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax

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In the not-too-distant future , Japan is faced with an aging, ailing population and a declining birth rate. With few young people willing to care for the elderly, they allow migrant workers in, with the promise of citizenship vaguely dangled in front of them. The migrant workers have a series of ridiculous and near-draconian rules and regulations placed on them, needing to navigate language testing, paying off loans, and unfair labour conditions just to survive long enough to send money back to their families abroad. […]

“I would like to point out that I specifically asked for no hijinks…”

Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass by Lilah Sturges, polterink

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CBR11Bingo – Rainbow Flag! The Lumberjanes’ latest adventure begins when troop leader Jen takes the scouts on an orienteering lesson.  Naturally, weird things begin to happen despite Jen’s plee for “no hijinks!” but the girls aren’t really to blame. Rather, their bizarre compass seems to be acting up, and the ‘janes start disappearing one by one, thrown into some sort of alternate void where they meet a cohort of robot butlers.  EVIL Robot Butlers?! But which conflict is worse: taking down a bunch of evil […]

Friendship can be found in the strangest of places

Little Robot by Ben Hatke

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Ben Hatke works his magic again!  He creates a beautiful story with only a few words, and most of those are sound effects! A little girl (she doesn’t have a name) finds an abandoned robot, and he becomes her friend.  It’s her only friend, as it turns out. I’m pretty sure she’s young, too young to go to school, and spends her days escaping her trailer park home and exploring the local junkyard. (We get all of this in about eight pages and absolutely no […]

The movie Wes Anderson should have made

Your Robot Dog Will Die by Arin Greenwood

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Apparently this is the year I read all the dead dog books. So . . . sorry for that! TW: Animal cruelty, animal death. In a near future, scientists showcased exactly how terrible humans are by genetically trying to improve on animals. (As if there is anything to improve on in any animal.) Their experiments went extremely wrong, however, when dogs suddenly stop wagging their tales, and suddenly are no longer man’s best friend. As the effects of this tragedy sweep the nation and dogs […]

Fresh Perspective

All Systems Red: The Muderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

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A big thank you to Faintingviolet for suggesting the Muderbot diaries to me. I’m not a huge Sci-Fi fan, but this book was perfect. Martha Wells masterfully creates an enormous world full of technological advancement and space travel but stays close enough to character to let us non-SciFi loving people into her world. ‘Murderbot’ is a robot with more human qualities than some of the humans we meet, and every introvert’s best friend. When not doing its job as armed security, it prefers to sit […]



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