Cannonball Read 10

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Now Here You Go Again, You Say You Want Your Freedom

The Power by Naomi Alderman

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I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this book the last week or so, even though I read it back in January. Though I guess I’ve mostly been thinking about the premise – teenage girls suddenly gain the power to hurt and even kill people with an electrical current from their hands. They can share the Power with older women, who can then wield it as well. That sounds particularly appealing with everything happening in the world right now. But I don’t like the Frame story (the male author writing this story, the advice of his female mentor) and how […]

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9/30/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:1 |

Journalist, born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada, now lives in Oregon, writes book about the Second US Civil War. Is Awesome.

American War by Omar El Akkad

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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.   — George Santayana If you were to guess what might cause a second US civil war, what would it be? Given the current political debate over the Trump administration, one might think it wouldn’t be so much a physical divide as an ideological one. Yet, in American War, by Omar El Akkad, the second civil war is imagined as erupting in 2074 over fossil fuels, because some southern states refuse to give them up, for both industrial manufacturing reasons and, just plain ornery stubbornness. As speculative fiction, El Akkad sets […]

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9/6/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:17 |

Without music, life would be a mistake

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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CBR10Bingo: So Popular One of my favorite bookstores in the world is Provincetown Books, a tiny space in the center of town, right next to Adams Pharmacy. The owner’s selection is very much my taste, and she always seems to have just what I’m looking for at the moment. This summer, I was on a mission to fill out a few more CBR10Bingo squares, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven was at the top of my list. Of course she had it in stock. As soon as I laid the book on the counter, she looked up at me […]

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9/1/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:47 |

Speculative extremes of women’s futures clearly demonstrate how everyone loses when inequality wins

Red Clocks: A Novel and The Power by Leni Zumas and Naomi Alderman

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I’m reviewing these two books together because despite their opposite takes on speculative futures, they use similar storytelling techniques to describe how women’s lives might be different in both the near, and far future. Naomi Alderman’s The Power imagines a future where women develop an ability to physically harm others with electric shocks. Due to the release and dispersion of an environmental hazard, women begin to develop a “skein” within their bodies which allows them to physically overpower people (men) with a jolt of energy. The strength of this ability varies from woman to woman, but seems to be stronger in women and […]

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8/13/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:11 |

A gripping time-travel slave narrative

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

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Kindred was our June Cannonball Read book club selection. I decided to read both the original novel by Octavia E. Butler and graphic novel adaptation by John Jennings and Damian Duffy. Both works focus on Dana, a young writer living in 1970s northern Los Angeles (much like Butler herself). She is recently married and moving into her new home with her older white husband, Kevin. They seem quite in love and happy. Dana is unpacking some books when suddenly and inexplicably she travels through time to 1815 Maryland. This will unfortunately be one of many trips back in time where […]

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7/26/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:13 |

The future is augmented

Company Town and Autonomous by Madeline Ashby and Annalee Newitz

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I’m combining my reviews for Company Town and Autonomous for a couple of reasons. 1. Both stories happen in the future 2. Both stories take place in Canada 3. Both authors have won awards for their books 4. The authors have appeared together on panels to discuss their work, where they are often likely to discuss human/robot sex, for reasons which will become clear in this review. Writing about the future is a broad topic and goes by a lot of descriptors—science fiction, utopian/dystopian fiction, speculative fiction—there are many choices and fine shades of meaning even amongst the writers who work in these genres. […]

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6/18/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:8 |

The things we take for granted

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

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I first learned about Octavia Butler a few years ago when searching online for innovative novels and Kindred showed up on just about every list I came across. When I went to the bookstore, I had become so enthusiastic about her that I decided to buy not only this book but also Fledgling, and then I read the latter first after a coin toss. That was probably a mistake, because I disliked it so much that I put off reading Kindred indefinitely. I’d finally put it back on my to-read list before the CBR book club vote, so the timing […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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5/28/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:28 |

Subtle, perceptive speculative fiction short stories

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

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I don’t often go for the short story format, but I needed to pick a book to fit the book challenge prompt “Book for a movie that you’ve already seen.” It almost never happens for me in that order, so I had to do a bit of sleuthing to find Stories of Your Life and Others, which contains the short story that eventually became the movie Arrival. I loved the entire collection of stories a lot more than I expected to. Ted Chiang has both a diverse imagination and a working intuition of how to make stories of this length […]

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Funds raised are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name.

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5/22/2018 | 's CBR10 Review No:26 |


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