Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About octothorp

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I buy books faster than I can read them. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: octothorp's Quick Questions interview.)

octothorp's Reviews:

Definitely watching out for more Lisa Jewell titles

Watching You by Lisa Jewell

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I misplaced this book halfway through reading it and I was SOOOO upset, because this was a page turner. Nothing is gonna be the Dublin Murder Squad books, but until Tana French starts writing as fast as I read, I’ve been desperate for something to scratch the mystery itch. Same with Liane Moriarty and her middle class Australian intrigue; I’ve been wanting something well written but still brisk and fun. This is kind of the perfect intersection of the two. So huzzah that this turned […]

We’re welders on the moon, we carry a harpoon

Artemis by Andy Weir

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If you liked The Martian, this book should be up your alley. It’s a little flashier and heavier on the fiction side of science fiction, but it’s definitely a grounded realistic space story similar to Weir’s first book. This was a bit more Ocean’s 11 on the moon than the man vs nature tale of The Martian, but much like the first book, the action is grounded in a well-thought out extrapolation of current science and what it would mean for the future, while still […]

Hi, fellow kids!

A World Without “Whom” by Emmy Favilla

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I was hoping this was going to be a book about the evolution of language, what I got was Strunk and White for the Internet age.  Which seems bizarre, as internet slang is all about breaking every rule, setting fire to the rulebook, and dancing in the ashes. Not to mention that being at the speed of real-time, Internet fads and slang have the shelf life of raw beef. I’m pretty sure three slang terms were created and deemed passé since I started this paragraph. […]

And the writing is anything but

Stiff by Mary Roach

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Another re-read for me, this time because my workplace book club suggested it. Feelings were mixed, in part because the text and writing style were, contrary to the title, so loose. The naysayers felt like the chapters were disjointed and that the writer was too flip, looking for a joke rather than research, but for my part I think it’s well balanced. Stiff follows what happens to the human body after we die – not the experience of death, not what happens to “us,” but […]

Perfection

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

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Ok, well, maybe not perfect. But darn good. I’ve been re-reading books from my collection attempting to pare it down to four full bookcases, and this was one I didn’t remember enough of.  So far, every book I’ve re-read for this purpose has gone in the resale pile, but this one I burned through; it’s just so damn well written. The Imperfectionists is the tale of a global newspaper and its decline as told through snapshots in the lives of its contributors. That sounds bone […]

Blackbird swearing in the dead of night

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

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What a strange book.  That’s not an insult coming from me, but I think this book suffers from a surfeit of ideas; Anders has A LOT to say here about the intersection of and battle between science and nature, and it all comes out in a book that’s not quite big enough to contain them all, which was the problem I had with her most recent novel that I read earlier this year. Like with that one, there are worse things than too many ideas, […]



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