Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the CBR18 Book Bingo Reading Challenge—Now Underway!   

We Don’t Have to Accept This

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want by Dr Emily M. Bender and Dr Alex Hanna

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Rating: 5 Stars In a nutshell: Experts in the field Bender and Hanna explore all the issues with AI – from what falls under the category, to how it impacts real people, and how we can demand better. Best for: I think this should be mandatory reading for anyone who uses ChatGPT to write an email. Or any executive who claims their company should be ‘AI forward’ (whatever the fuck that means). But also, it’s great for folks like me who have a reputation for […]

I don’t think I’d want to be trapped in a giant empanada

Shrunkation by Janine Amesta

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3.5 stars This was an ARC I received from the author, Janine Amesta. My opinions are my own. Catalina and Trey’s marriage is in trouble. Catalina is exhausted from her demanding work, nearing burnout, and incapable of forgetting some foolish and hurtful things Trey said to her months ago. She’s feeling unappreciated and ignored, not to mention misunderstood. Trey knows that he screwed up, but he thinks all they need is some quality time together. He won a weekend stay at a luxury resort in […]

“Now did you think it all through? All these things will catch up to you…” (Double bingo)

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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Nowhere Book Bingo: From a genre you’ve never read (true crime) CBR16 Bingo: Fiasco (Theranos was a massive fraud and a fiasco) I’ve owned this book since 2020 and am pretty sure I picked it up in an e-book sale because of the many Cannonball reviews I’ve read about it over the years. Not being particularly interested in the tech world or medical science, and certainly, not someone who reads a lot of business news, I didn’t really hear about this case as it was […]

“Tech is racist and sexist and ableist because the world is so. Computers just reflect the existing reality and suggest that things will stay the same—they predict the status quo.”

More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech by Meredith Broussard

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Meredith Broussard’s More than a Glitch took me a long time to read (nearly two months) for such a short book (around 190 pages before Notes and Bibliography). But if you happened to attend Cannonball Read’s Murderbot book club then you got a glimpse at part of what was bothering me about reading this book right now – and why it was so important that I do so. I’m having big issues with the onslaught of AI (specifically generative AI) especially with so little oversight […]

The Future Is Bleak

Sensation Machines by Adam Wilson

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Read as part of CBR16 Bingo: Tech. In addition to some of the tech developments set in this near-future pre-apocalyptic tale, one of the main subplots is an interactive video game the characters play that features heavily in the narrative. This book started out interesting enough: we come upon a disaffected broke upper class Brooklyn couple, trying to recover from infertility and the loss of an infant. The husband has lost their money at a time of a bad economic downturn but is trying to […]

‘He is in a dream but the beast is not. It comes! Wake!’

The Keeping Place by Isobelle Carmody

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Ok, I am trying my best to keep the momentum up here because I feel that I may not have much free time in the next few weeks after quarter starts. As I mentioned in my review of the first book, Obernewtyn, The Obernewtyn Chronicles ended up expanding beyond the author’s original plans. There was originally going to be five books in the series, making The Keeping Place, the penultimate volume. Instead, The Keeping Place ended up as book four of seven. And maybe the […]



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