Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Creating seasons where none exist (Groundhog Day part II)

On the Calculation of Volume II by Solvej Balle

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CBR 17 BINGO: Green (see cover image) Translated by Barbara Haveland Back in April, I read the first installment of Solvej Balle’s seven-part series On the Calculation of Volume and was impressed by its poetic sublimity. I wondered how she could possibly extend the concept into six more novels. I enjoyed part II, but I’m still wondering where this is going. To recap, in part I, bookseller Tara Selter is experiencing “broken time.” She appears to be caught in a loop where she keeps experiencing […]

Let’s Not Ship Toxic Men

Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao

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Heavenly Tyrant, the sequel to Iron Widow, picks up immediately after the first book finishes, and the long ago Emperor Qin Zheng is awake now and won’t be dying of the plague he was certainly dying from. He is immediately accepted as the ruler of Huaxia, and has absolute power. Zetian marries him, and they implement what seems to have parallels to the rise of Communist China and Mao Zedong. He strips wealthy folks of their lands to redistribute and he imprisons and executes many […]

Best book of 1998?!

The Decision by K. A. Applegate

Megamorphs 2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs by K. A. Applegate

The Departure by K. A. Applegate

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It’s possible that the best book I’ve read all year is a thirty year old Animorphs book. This whole batch of books is a lot of fun, but book 19 is next level. Book 18, The Decision, is an Ax the Andalite book, and it’s quite good. I think I mention this in an earlier review, but one crazy sci-fi element of the Animorphs books comes to morphing animals that are smaller than oneself. If you, as a human, morph into a tiny cockroach (yes, […]

The Expanse keeps expanding!

Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey

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This is the fourth book in The Expanse series, and sees the focus both narrow back to our main crew while also expanding into genuinely new worlds. I have been making my way through both the books and the TV series at the same time, and am now at the point where my reading is how way beyond my TV progress, but it’s ok. In this series, focal character James Holden is a perennial optimist, with noble ideas about humanity and truth and morality. He’s […]

Possible Death By Lunar Cheese Volcano

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

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When the Moon Hits Your Eye is not really a straightforward story. The premise is basically “What if the moon actually turned to cheese, suddenly and unexplicably? How would people react?” Each chapter is a mini-episode of a couple of people trying to figure out what is going on, and what they think and how they feel about it.  These episodes range from a group of retirees in a diner, to a couple of young adults working at rival cheese shops, to NASA scientists, to […]

A kid asked me to do define communism. Um…

Red Scare by Liam Francis Walsh

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Fear of communism is rampant in America, but at the moment, Peggy is more concerned with her ongoing complications from polio, her parent’s struggling marriage, and oh yeah: witnessing the murder of a mysterious man the feds are calling a Russian spy. The spy was carrying a glowing red rod, and before he died, he hid the item in one of Peggy’s crutches. Not only does Peggy find herself hiding a mysterious Russian artifact, but that artifact enables her to fly! Suddenly, her health woes […]



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