Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Speaking a universal language

How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa

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Thammavongsa is a Laotian-Canadian writer and her collection of short stories focus on Laotian immigrants and their children in ways poignant, funny and heartbreaking. Her characters tend to be lower class, aspiring to be middle-class, striving for a better life. For the most part, Thammavongsa isn’t focused directly on the aspiring part, but the small interactions, misinterpretations and obsessions that her characters experience. Her stories really draw on threads of race, class and gender. There are 14 short stories in the collection, and as with […]

That OTHER Christmas Story

Matthew 1-2 by Godtopus

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Happy Holidays <or insert your choice of holiday greeting here> from South Louisiana! Coming to you live this holiday season from a street cleared of debris from Hurricane Ida just in time for someone to literally coat their front yard in inflatables and lights.  I have so many questions: how many extension cords are involved? Do they buy new lights every year or fight the battle to untangle the old ones? More importantly, WHERE DO THEY STORE ALL OF THAT? It’s not like we have […]

Small unsatisfying bytes of sci-fi

Cosmogramma by Courttia Newland

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‘Cosmogramma’ is a collection of speculative short stories of a science fiction bent. Robots, AI, space travel… with a little sprinkling of mermaids and zombies and superhumans to keep things interesting. Given it’s a collection of short stories, I’ll do my best to review each briefly and then give my overall impression: Percipi A dispassionate retelling of a robopocalyse. Engaging, well told, and very believable. I wish that this short story was fleshed out and just the whole novel, honestly. Reminded me of ‘animatrix’.  Five […]

My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side.

Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories by Women by Paula Guran, editor

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As a reminder, I was really interested in reading vampire fiction before Halloween, and this book of short stories, cobbled together by Paula Guran, was a really wonderful sampler. There are about 25 stories ranging in eras from the early 1600s with Catherine of Aragon and Henry VII, vampire slayers, to a dystopian future where teenagers decide to ‘just do it’ and become vampires to rush the inevitable. The anthology is organized by era and showcases a wide variety of world-building concepts, tones, geographies, and […]

Thanksgiving Week Glut

The Odyssey by Homer; Emily Wilson

A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd

Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

Nine Princes of Amber by Roger Zelazny

To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer

Free Lance Pallbearers by Ishmael Reed

Dragons of Highlord Skies by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Revolutionary Characters by Gordon Wood

Glory by Vladimir Nabokov

Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas

South of the Border West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

Books of Blood by Clive Barker

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

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The Odyssey – 5/5 Stars So my review is specific to the newer Emily Wilson translation, which I find particularly good and readable. She writes a long introduction that serves as a solid guide to the epic, to the writing, the historical context, and other important keys. This is long, but worthwhile, especially if you’re new to the story or it’s been a long time or you’re a little rough in your epic-reading. From there, there’s a very good translator’s note of some length explaining […]

Sometimes a short story is just enough, but sometimes it leaves you wanting. CBR13 Reviews 7-9

The Prince and the Troll by Rainbow Rowell

The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman

If the Fates Allow by Rainbow Rowell

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I have been a very bad reviewer in 2021. I have been an amazing reader, with a list longer than any year I can remember. But sitting down to review has not been easy for me. I thought maybe I would try writing “bundles” of reviews, putting similar items together and knocking a few paragraphs out. Lets see how that goes. In order of least liked, to most: The Prince and the Troll. Blurb: It’s fate when a man accidentally drops his phone off the […]



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