Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About jmsudar

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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:

The Echo Machine

The Echo Machine by David Pakman

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I’m a fan of David Pakman’s politics. I’m not always a fan of his style because I think he has so much content he tries to produce that he winds up leaning into clickbait, which is both a necessary strategy in the modern internet landscape and, in my opinion, irresponsible. That didn’t stop me from reading The Echo Machine because I think the bulk of his content is excellent and makes good, clear criticism of modern conservatism while advocating for social democracy. More of that, please. […]

Alcatraz: The Last Escape

Alcatraz: The Last Escape by Ken Widner, Mike Lynch

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I’ll be totally honest: originally I thought this review was going to be scathing, primarily because I thought it had the air of a cash grab. There is a definite positional slant to this book because it is written by one of the family members of the Anglin brothers, who participated in this escape attempt. In many cases, the best intentions are read from these, let’s be honest, career criminals. However, by the end I thought this was justified. The positive view of Whitey Bulger […]

It Will Only Hurt for a Moment

It Will Only Hurt for a Moment by Delilah S. Dawson

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I read this after seeing Delilah Dawson speak at ComicCon. She was amazing. Told heartfelt stories, was entertaining, and gave sincere answers to audience questions about the craft. The book she was plugging, It Will Only Hurt for a Moment, is set at an artist’s retreat where our protagonist, while digging a pit kiln, uncovers a coffin where someone was buried alive. Shit ensues. This was a hard book to read, and I mean that with maximal praise. The writing was excellent and effective, the characters […]

Lifeform

Lifeform by Jenny Slate

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It’s tough to write about this book because I’m still grappling with how out there the voice is. My opinion about Jenny Slate remains sky high, but she is… very LA. Good! That’s her style and she absolutely dominates with it. This book is very poetic, which is not my jam but which I enjoyed through her performance. This book is unvarnished, exciting, and crazy, and I mean all of those things in a good way. At this point I’m out of things to say […]

The Hound and Other Tales

The Hound and Other Tales by HP Lovecraft, Gou Tanabe, Zack Davisson

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Another excellent manga adaptation of HP Lovecraft! This was apparently the first of these adaptations to be available in English. These also are Lovecraft stories that I don’t know nearly as well, which was exciting. My favorite of the stories was by far The Temple. In it, a U Boat takes a strange artifact from a dead Brit. Shit ensues. There was so much that worked for this: the setting, on a disabled submarine, is so good for claustrophobic horror and the slow creep as the […]

The Call of Cthulhu

The Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecract, Gou Tanabe, Zack Davisson

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The Call of Cthulhu manga… you know it’s a real shame that Lovecraft was such a fucking racist, because otherwise this would be a great book to recommend to people. It perfectly captures cosmic horror, with Lovecraft’s themes about mankind’s miserable scope of existence on full display, but does so with a more personal and close scope than any other Lovecraft except perhaps the Dunwich Horror. In Cthulhu, Lovecraft has people fight back. What’s more, mankind even triumphs for a short period of time. Our […]



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