Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Uncoolaidman

CBR16 Participant
CBR17 Participant

I like reading books, so why not?

Uncoolaidman's Reviews:

The Wheel (spinning) of Time

The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan

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Book four of The Wheel of Time is where I began to have some doubts about finishing this series. I knew going in that I was setting myself up to real fourteen books, which is more than I have done for any other series. Though I found the first book, The Eye of the World, to be derivative (of Lord of the Rings and Arthurian legend in particular) at times I enjoyed the story and characters enough to continue on. The second novel, The Great […]

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.”

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

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Cat’s Cradle is the fifth book I have read by Kurt Vonnegut. You’ll never believe it, but as a white, cis-gender man in college, I really got into Slaughterhouse-Five. After that, Vonnegut went into my rotation of authors I would look out for any time I went into a used bookstore. Since Vonnegut books are a finite resource, I try to restrict myself to one book every few years. Since then, I have read Breakfast of Champions, Armageddon in Retrospect, and Slapstick. I enjoyed them […]

Like being on a pleasant scenic drive and then plummeting off a cliff to a fiery death

Playground by Richard Powers

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When people say that the ending of a movie, book, show ruined the whole thing, I rarely agree with them. There are some rare exceptions, looking at you Game of Thrones, but for the most part if I enjoy 90% – 95% of a story then ending being a bit underwhelming does not taint the rest of it for me. It’s about the journey, not the destination is what I say. And I really enjoyed the journey of Playground, but I think the destination is […]

I’m not any better at meditating now

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

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One of my favorite movies of the past few years is The Holdovers. In it, a curmugeonly history professor played by Paul Giamatti, is stuck at the boarding school he works at over the holiday break with one of his students and the cook. On Christmas day he gives both of them a gift, a copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. In his words “For my money, it’s like the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita all rolled up into one.” High praise, and […]

An intriguing mystery revealed in an unintriguing way

The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young

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Me and my spouse have a Christmas tradition of buying each other a book. We generally try to find something that we think the other would like but might not be something they would usually pick out themselves. The Unmaking of June Farrow was my pick for her this year. Not to pat my own back, but I nailed it. She gave it five stars on Goodreads after finishing the whole book in two days. While we are both consistent readers, it is unusual for […]

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover?

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

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Ok, I admit it. I judged a book by its cover. I really try to not be shallow or too focused on aesthetics when I walk through a bookstore, but I admit that the cover for Cloud Cuckoo Land has been catching my eye for a few years now. I know a good cover has no relation to the quality of the book, but something must draw my attention when I am not hunting with a specific book in mind. So, when I saw Cloud […]



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