Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About jmsudar

CBR15 Participant
CBR17 Participant
CBR17 Levels

JM Sudar dreams of someday walking into a bookstore and seeing a book of his own for sale. After hearing his wife lament that she forgot to write her Cannonball review _again_, he decided to pick up a controller and give it a try himself.

jmsudar's Reviews:

Fools and Mortals

Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell

by Leave a Comment

Bernard Cornwell is the sort of author (like Crichton long ago) responsible for my flirtation with both writing and archaeology as a profession. He does an excellent job of weaving in historical goodies and details of the time, making quite a bit of the work educational in that excellent way where you don’t realize you’re learning anything until someone brings up Elizabethan persuivants and you’re like, “ah ha, the dudes prosecuting catholics who threatened to rip tongues out like they’re shopping dinner spots.” Our main […]

Number Go Up

Number Go Up by Zeke Faux

The Bitcoin Whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto

by Leave a Comment

Number Go Up brought me to a terrible realization, but one I sadly agree with: Bitcoin may never go all the way away. Zeke covers this at the end of his in-depth investigation of the crypto world, pointing out that for the Bitcoin maximalist true believers, everything that happens is taken as evidence that Bitcoin will only become stronger. It’s something I’ve observed online, it’s a cult, and you can’t argue factfully with someone who believes something on faith. Bleh. There is exactly one Bitcoin […]

Uzumaki

Uzuamaki by Junji Ito

by Leave a Comment

This is it, the big one, the one Ito to rule them all. Other megafans might argue Tomie should take the place as the top of Ito’s oeuvre (or Shoichi, bleh) but Uzumaki is the only one I’m sure to read every single year. It takes a simple but bizarre premise, “a town cursed by spirals,” and makes it… work. Not just work, it makes it excel. Cursed by spirals makes zero sense, until you see how Ito takes that, begins with a simple personal […]

Mimi’s Tales of Terror

Mimi's Tales of Terror by Junji Ito

by Leave a Comment

I had a very bad day a couple weeks ago and my wife surprised me in response by pre-ordering the latest Junji Ito. I have a very good wife. Mimi’s Tales of Terror adapts an apparently famous Japanese collection of urban legends, Shin Mimibukuro (New Earmuffs), and gives it that trademark Ito horrifying art and pacing. In some ways it’s like watching a handful of Tales from the Crypt or Are You Afraid of the Dark episodes framed through a Japanese perspective. This is one […]

Hell House

Hell House by Richard Matheson

by Leave a Comment

I have a weird relationship with Richard Matheson. I’m a big fan of his work, sort of. He certainly was influential, with his work on the Twilight Zone and I Am Legend having a large impact in my life. But also the book I Am Legend is significantly weirder than any of the movie adaptations. The closest film is Omega Man with Charlton Heston, with the weird sexuality of the vampires being one of their biggest threats. Matheson often disliked adaptations of his work that […]

Easy Money

Easy Money by Ben McKenzie

by Leave a Comment

Easy Money is investigative non-fiction looking into the scams endemic to the crypto space. I am not a crypto-fan, but I am a tech worker and both curious about the space and annoyed by crypto-bros, so books like this are educational catnip for me. Ben McKenzie was apparently an actor on the OC. Don’t know, never watched it. It turns out he also has a degree in econ, which he uses to great effect in this book. The subject matter is primarily an exploration of […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo