Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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A tribute to the fitting end to a wonderful book series

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

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It’s with a bittersweet heart that I possibly inadvisably chose to finish reading this book, thus pushing out my overall bedtime much into “…now, really” hours. I both didn’t want it to end (there were supposed to be two hours left, and then I blinked and suddenly there was only 27 minutes left??) and very much wanted to see it end (see: “bedtime, inadvisable” above). The very first book in this series, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, is the very first book that […]

“From the beginning we have wandered. To this day, we wander still, but for all our travels we are not lost . We fly with courage and will undying.”

Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers #3) by Becky Chambers

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It has been quite a while since I’ve had a truly lovely reading experience. I should have known that Becky Chambers would deliver the goods. When I read To Be Taught, if Fortunate in September of 2019 (godtopus I missed regular library service in 2020 and am glad to have it back) I was simply astounded at what it accomplished, and it was from that time my favorite of Chambers’ works, with A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet a very close second (I […]

Slow at first, but absolutely worth it in the end

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

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From Goodreads: From the ground, we stand. From our ship, we live. By the stars, we hope Centuries after the last humans left Earth, the Exodus Fleet is a living relic, a place many are from but few outsiders have seen. Humanity has finally been accepted into the galactic community, but while this has opened doors for many, those who have not yet left for alien cities fear that their carefully cultivated way of life is under threat. Tessa chose to stay home when her […]

Questions about Modernity and Ways of Life – But in Space

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

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While Becky Chambers has already explained the circumstances of the descendants of Earth in broad strokes in her previous two Wayfarer novels, in this third novel, she shifts her attention to the remaining human fleet.  When Earth was on the brink of collapse, some people with resources started by colonizing planets and moons in the Solar System such as Mars.  Those left behind eventually had to deconstruct the cities and sky scrapers, and use those resources to create a fleet for the last of humanity […]

Choice, Purpose and Design

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

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While A Closed and Common Orbit deals with the aftermath of the events The Long Way to Small, Angry Planet, it can be read independently.  The novel alternates between the view points of two characters.  Lovelace/Sidra’s perspective takes place directly after the other novel, and Jane’s chapters take place about 20 years prior, and explore how she ended up escaping a planet where she was genetically engineered for one specific function/job.  This isn’t a spoiler since Pepper was introduced in the previous novel as a […]

“She was glad to have met someone who liked to read.” (Double Bingo)

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

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#CBR11 Bingo: Cannonballer Says (recommended by Carriejay, faintingviolet, emmalita, dAvid, tillie, badkittyuno and Narfna, among others) Official book description: Lovelace was once merely a ship’s artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has no memory of what came before. As Lovelace learns to negotiate the universe and discover who she is, she makes friends with Pepper, an excitable engineer, who’s determined to help her learn and grow. Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that no matter how vast space is, two people […]



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