Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A time warp Ikea

Finna by Nino Cipri

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Finna by Nino Cipri was another Lawless Book Club read back in January. In this science fiction novella, we meet Ava and Jules who work at an Ikea-inspired furniture store called  LitenVärld. They’ve recently broken up and are having issues navigating their work and now-only friendship status. Ava is anxious and unsure of what she wants from anything. Jules is Black and non-binary and more zen about the break-up. They’ve worked through much of their trauma and can’t force Ava to figure herself out. Before […]

Enter the IKEA-verse

FINNA by Nino Cipri

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“Of course Jules was alive, they had never faced a challenge whose ass they couldn’t kick, and they had the stores of righteous rage that all retail employees collected.” ― Nino Cipri, Finna “It’s okay,” Jules said. They looked….not calm, exactly, but not scared. They looked, as they had for most of their trip, thrilled that they weren’t getting misgendered while answering customers’ stupid questions about how much weight a towel rod could really hold. ― Nino Cipri, Finna Ava works at LitenVärld and she […]

A series of existential crises packed into one easy-to-read tome! #CBRBINGO – Star

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

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Even though Stephen Hawking did an impeccable and brilliant job dumbing down all this physics and quantum mechanics and SCIENCE, I am still not science-smart enough to fully understand most of it. Good try, though, and it was so readable! And it gave me several existential crises. Like, okay, if you are just jonesing for a panic attack, pick up this book and when he starts in on the origin of the universe, just let your mind go there, see if you can encompass the […]

“Wormholes tend to travel in packs.”

FINNA by Nino Cipri

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Well this was an adorable little slice of a book. A wormhole opens in a giant IKEA-like store, a customer wanders through it, and two disgruntled employees (who have recently broken up and have been trying to avoid each other) are assigned to go fetch her, using a FINNA device to track her down. Ava and Jules hate their soul-sucking retail jobs but love each other, even though their various neuroses have made them incompatible. When the employees are all herded into a break room […]

Disappointment in space

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Sigh. I have been on a hunt for lady sci-fi writers. There’s Lois McMaster Bujold, of course, but I’ve already read (and reread, and rerereread) all of hers. Mostly, the women are in the fantasy section, and I wanted space! So I had high hopes for this one, and they were dashed – dashed, I tell you! There’s a decades-long war going on with some aliens, and an internal coup going on in the military between factions who think the head dude is doing it […]



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