Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Claire Badger

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Claire enjoys Canadian Fiction, sci-fi and books about grammar.

Claire Badger's Reviews:

Be careful what you wish for

Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

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Zazen’s protagonist, Della, exists somewhere between memory, fever dream, and mental illness. She’s flamed out of her doctoral work and is working at a vegan restaurant, the child of wannabe west-coast revolutionaries and surrounded by people she loathes for the way they wear their politics in everything they do. To say Della is surrounded by Social Justice Warriors is a bit of an understatement. She yearns to do more than just talk or just shop according to impossible principles, and she loathes the status quo. […]

No books were harmed, this time

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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I was 16 when I read The Handmaid’s Tale and I was just beginning my love affair with dystopian tales. I don’t think I liked bleak stories all that much growing up, but man, as soon as I read Fahrenheit 451 they were all I wanted. Give me some of that sweet, sweet harrowing future straight to the veins, and anything like it. When a friend gifted me The Handmaid’s Tale, I thought I’d love it. I read it voraciously, in about two days, and […]

Refreshingly Cool

To Build A Fire by Christophe Chaboute

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I settled in to read this quick graphic novel on a warm autumn evening. Sitting in my Muskoka chair in the backyard, sun streaming down on me, I soon felt the cold and frost of Jack London’s classic tale brought to visceral life by the pen of Christophe Chaboute. You’d be tempted to think this is a black and white comic right until the first fire is lit, which is when we finally see flashes of red, orange and yellow, but a closer look will […]

Psychos and killers and worms, oh my!

The Troop by Nick Cutter

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Pretty much since I first got an E-Reader, Kobo has been trying to get me to read Nick Cutter. When my E-Reader broke and I switched to the audiobook platform Kobo offered, it continued to push Cutter on me. My love of survival stories, post apocalyptic narratives, and zombie tales is probably what made the algorithm think I’d like this book, but this was not my cup of tea. Do I want to listen to the gory butchering of a cat, or two boys trying […]

Move across the country…

Someone who will love you in all your damaged glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

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Do you like Bojack Horseman? Do you need something to hold you over while you wait for season 6? Are you maybe nursing a sore heart or wondering if you’ll always be alone or if being with someone always feels like this or if it’ll ever just get better? Do you like run-on sentences that verge on neurotic but somehow veer just on the line between charming and twee? This is the short story collection for you. These stories speak to you and are written […]

Aging down the line

Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax

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In the not-too-distant future , Japan is faced with an aging, ailing population and a declining birth rate. With few young people willing to care for the elderly, they allow migrant workers in, with the promise of citizenship vaguely dangled in front of them. The migrant workers have a series of ridiculous and near-draconian rules and regulations placed on them, needing to navigate language testing, paying off loans, and unfair labour conditions just to survive long enough to send money back to their families abroad. […]



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