Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A quietly thrilling side-quel to The Glass Hotel in the key of Cloud Atlas

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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I would list the HBO Max adaptation of Station Eleven as one of the few adaptations better than the book it came from. I loved that mini-series and thought it both illuminated and improved the source material. I do not feel it is a slight to Emily St. John Mandel to say that, as she was heavily involved in the adaptation. Mandel is one of the most interesting authors working right now. She is enormously talented at world-building and tight, beautiful prose. However, her characters […]

MASTERPIECE.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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I was originally tempted to just post this whole novel as one giant (and perfect) quotation. We knew it was coming but we behaved inconsistently. We stocked up on supplies-just in case-but sent our children to school, because how do you get any work done with the kids at home? (We were still thinking in terms of getting work done. The most shocking thing in retrospect was the degree to which all of us completely missed the point.) One day, when we look back at […]

“I’m no expert, but I remember reading somewhere, every time you retrieve a memory, that act of retrieval, it corrupts the memory a little bit. Maybe changes it a little.”

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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In one word: Unexpected Cannonball Read Bingo: Rep I was a huuuuuge fan of Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” (I mean, weren’t we all?). It was truly perfection, a triumph in storytelling in my favorite genre of post-apocalyptic literature. And so, I was equal parts excited and nervous to read her new book. Would I be disappointed? I talked to a few people before I read it and they all echoed the same exact thing: this book is NOTHING like the other book, and […]

The trajectory of choices

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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I spent the last several minutes trying to locate a passage in The Glass Hotel that demonstrated both the quality of the writing and the premise of the novel. I came up short. The problem with The Glass Hotel, which is a very good book bordering on great, is at times it feels steeped in metaphor that has no clear meaning the reader can ascribe. Takeaways from the novel will likely vary from reader to reader and I think it may change depending on the […]

Not my “best of” but YMMV.

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Memorial by Bryan Washington

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In which it becomes clear to me that a “best of” list means next to nothing. I’m trying (and doubt I will make it) to catch up with my long backlog list from 2020 and to actually reach my goal of 52 reviews. Putting together mini-groups to review together has made this somewhat easier, and yes, I know that some of my groupings are probably random. Here we have two books that I thought were fine. I probably wouldn’t recommend them to friends, but if […]

Not as good as her last one

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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Official book description: Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass and cedar palace on an island in British Columbia. Jonathan Alkaitis works in finance and owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. That same day, Vincent’s half-brother, Paul, scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.” Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune Logistics, sees the note from […]



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