Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Featured Review Archive

These reviews, which were promoted in CBR social media, on our homepage, and in Pajiba Love, appear below by review publication date, not by date featured.

 

Think of ingredients like household cats – if they’re helping, you can always add more.

The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food you can make so you don't die by Zilla Novikov, Rachel A. Rosen

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We wish we could come into all your homes and take care of you. But that’s called “breaking and entering” and apparently it’s illegal? Cooking is one of the greatest and most consistent joys of my life. Even so, there are times when I have so little energy that the best I can do is the bare minimum. Since I am white knuckling my way through life with chronic depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and a neuro-spicy brain, I have certain staples that I keep on […]

CBR Bingo 15: On the Road

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

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This book could fit into several of Bingo categories, and sadly has been banned in some places (usual suspects). Written in 1993 and set in 2025, The Parable of the Sower is a frighteningly plausible story about a world impacted by climate change, political breakdown and economic and social inequity. The protagonist, Lauren Olamina, is a black teenager who has grown up outside of Los Angeles. Cars are a thing of the past, electricity is scarce and becoming scarcer. There is little rain to grow […]

Siskel & Ebert Get the Biography Treatment

Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever by Matt Singer

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The core of Opposable Thumbs is the relationship between Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert and how it turned into the entity “Siskel & Ebert” that still dominates the movie review and criticism landscape more than a decade after the death of its last surviving member. It is the nature of that professional relationship, born from a natural wellspring of competition, which turned into decades of increased media literacy. It began in earnest in 1975, when the two men met for lunch in a Chicago pub […]

Are You Happy In This Modern World?

The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

How to Break Up With Your Phone by Catherine Price

by 1 Comment

A double-header! I read these back-to-back and, while that was super fun for me, I would recommend picking one or the other. The Shallows is a sharply-observed exploration of what the internet is doing to our brains and how that is affecting… everything. First published in 2010, author Nicholas Carr was responding to rapidly shrinking computers and laptops and how the ability to access the internet from anywhere was altering our minds and society. Smart phones were not yet ubiquitous (the first iPhone was released […]

Fantasy is Social Commentary and I Love It

Witch King by Martha Wells

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CBR15Bingo — Relation “ship” — This is a very relationship focused book and they spend time on two different ships as well. My first Martha Wells! And a nice way to start, as I fully enjoyed this book and am glad I went ahead and bought it at full price after dithering over it at the bookstore two days in a row. I got the B&N signed edition, which is a sturdy hardcover with her signature embossed in gold on the inside cover. I thought […]

Gini Koch encouraged me to join the team and ‘touch an alien’, so I did!

Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch

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CBR Bingo: North America – Touched by an Alien is set in the American Southwest, particularly Arizona and New Mexico. A few years ago I picked up Alexander Outland: Space Pirate by G.J. Koch and it was a blast.  Funny, fast paced, sci-fi adventure.  Afterwards, I looked for more books by the author and discovered she also wrote under Gini Koch and was impressed by the volume of books on the shelf at the bookstore.  As I didn’t know where to start, I got overwhelmed and went […]



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