Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

No One Else Can Come in and Copy You

Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology by Jorge Goldstein

by 2 Comments

Ok, keeping with the gene-theme this summer, I’ll now be briefly turning my attention to gene patents. Jorge Goldstein’s Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology is a great introduction to biological patents in the US (and beyond). It’s also a rather personal narrative; Goldstein entered the field of patent law at a time when biotechnology was experiencing some rapid advances (many of them mentioned in the previous book I reviewed), and he describes his career as like […]

Kin in Far-flung Places

A Disappearance in Fiji by Nilima Rao

by Leave a Comment

CBR17 Bingo: Diaspora – This story is intimately bound up in the experience of the Indian diaspora in colonial Fiji, who went to work there as indentured servants but were in reality little more than slaves. Caught between demotion and disgrace, Indian police officer Akal Singh is instead posted to colonial Fiji, where an investigation into the vanishing of an indentured Indian woman from a sugarcane plantation is complicated by the political pressures within the British Empire. I’m a sucker for an unusual setting in […]

Creepy

The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir

by Leave a Comment

Best for: Those who like a pretty horrific psychological tale. CONTENT NOTE: There are cats that start out alive but are not alive at the end of the book. In a nutshell: Iðunn is exhausted but doesn’t know why, and doctors aren’t helping. But we eventually know what is going on … sort of. Worth quoting: N/A Why I chose it: I somehow ended up following author Knútsdóttir on BlueSky. No idea when that came about. But I’d been wanting to read this since she […]

The Rise of Sanctuary Noodles

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

by Leave a Comment

There are many reasons that Annalee Newitz’ Automatic Noodle felt like it was written for me specifically. It has cooking, which is one of my great loves and is a way I show love and feel worth when I am anxious. It has characters trying to live and be in control of their lives in a country with laws that don’t grant them full autonomy. Every one of these characters, whether we get their backstory or not, is a weirdo with enormous trauma just doing […]

“Life was very different when you walked through it.”

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

by 1 Comment

CBR17 Bingo: Green – Behold, the cover! Recently-retired Harold receives a note from his friend Queenie, who he has not seen in twenty years, to inform him that she is dying, and sets out to walk the length of England to go and see her, in the belief that as long as he walks she will not die. This is a pilgrimage across England, but internally it is also a pilgrimage of Harold’s self, in which he comes to terms with the many things that […]

The World Tries to Make Us Commodities, but We are Human.

Plum by Cate C. Wells

by Leave a Comment

When we first meet Jo-Beth Connoly, aka Plum, she’s at work. Adam Wade is watching her give his step brother and business partner a blow job in a private room at The White Van, a strip club run by the Steel Bones Motorcycle Club. Adam’s brother tries to short Plum on money and a fight ensues. Adam gives Plum more money than she’s owed to settle the issue. Plum is concerned Adam may think they have some sort of pay in advance thing going. Adam […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo