Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Good evening, everyone. I'm Leslie Monster, and this is Nightline. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: narfna's Quick Questions interview.)

narfna's Reviews:

“We are all of us only human.”

Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch, #2) by Ann Leckie

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The first time I read this book, my main complaint was that it didn’t have as obvious of a structure as Ancillary Justice, but on this second time through, I think I’m going to change my mind about it being less structured, and instead say that it’s differently structured. This book is structured around Breq’s journey from vengeful former A.I. enslaved to a tyrant, to having nearly as much power as that tyrant herself. What she does with that power is entirely shaped by her […]

Anthony Horowitz becomes a character in his own mystery novel.

The Word is Murder (Hawthorne, #1) by Anthony Horowitz

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It’s been almost three months since I finished this and I still don’t know what I want to say about this weird little book. This is a very meta murder mystery, in which Anthony Horowitz becomes a character in his own writing. (It is left up to you to decide how much of his “real life” that we see in the book is like his own real life, but I’m just going to presume background and biographical details are all true, though presumably if he […]

Bardugo can do so much better than this entire debut trilogy.

Siege and Storm (The Grisha Trilogy, #2) by Leigh Bardugo

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Sometimes a good author just gets stuck telling a mediocre story, and that’s what you have here. I know she can do so much better than this. So, let’s go over the good thing before I get to the bad: Nikolai. The second son of the King of Ravka, aka SPOILERS the privateer Sturmhond END SPOILERS. That character stole every scene he was in, and breathed life into the pretty much dead on arrival story. He was the lone bright spot in what was otherwise a […]

Thanks to all the Cannonballers who reviewed this. I picked it up way sooner because of that than I would have otherwise.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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You guys gotta read this shit. I listened to the audiobook version, and I kept looking for reasons to listen, it was so compelling. Just really solid investigative journalism into a story that seems unbelievable when you string it all together. By now, not many people haven’t heard of Elizabeth Holmes and her sham Silicon Valley start-up company, Theranos, but just in case you haven’t, Holmes started Theranos in 2003 just after dropping out of Stanford. Her dream was to produce a medical device that […]

“If you’re going to make a desperate, hopeless act of defiance you should make it a good one.”

Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, #1) by Ann Leckie

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Upping this to five stars upon re-read. Breq makes me feel feelings. I remember where I was when I read this first time, and I distinctly remember reading the first third or so of this book and just being profoundly confused about what was going on, but also thinking to myself, when I re-read this, it’s going to make so much more sense, and that turned out to be true. But what did surprise me on re-read is that not everything is completely clear, and […]

“She looked in the mirror and gasped. Melissa gasped back at her. For a long time, she stood there, just blinking. George smiled, and Melissa smiled too.”

George by Alex Gino

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This was such a lovely little book. I’m glad it exists, and not just for little trans kids, but for all kids. It encourages empathy, imagination, and kindness, something all kids (and grown-ups) can always benefit from. George is the birthname of our female protagonist, who is in the 4th grade, and knows that even though she was born with a boy’s body, inside she has always been a girl. She has never told anyone this (although we get hints that her family knows something […]



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