Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

When your buddy has a real chip on his shoulder

Murderbot Diaries All Systems Red by Martha Wells

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cbr13bingo  Rec’d (by y’all) What can I say about Murderbot Diaries All Systems Red that has not already been said? I have nothing new to add to the conversation about Martha Wells series. Only (for those who have not read) this first novella deals with the idea of what is human and what is robot. It asks can a robot be “human” or at least human-like? Can one make that choice themselves or must someone or something validate them, make them “legitimate”? I told a […]

There was a game he could see and another he couldn’t, and he would play them both.

Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices by Swapna Krishna and Jenn Northington

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My formative King Arthur works were the 1963 Disney movie The Sword in the Stone, and 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When I discovered Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, as a preteen, my life as a reader of fantasy and romance was set. I’m a King Arthur enthusiast, but not a purist (except for Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 King Arthur – great cast, beautiful visuals, terrible movie that should never have been marketed as “historically accurate”). Hearing that a work is a retelling of […]

Only nineteen pages but I’ll take every last one

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory by Martha Wells

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This actually ended up being my 100th reading challenge book, as it were. And I’m counting this as Pride!Reading as well–Murderbot is aro ace and non-binary, innit? FINALLY got my hands on this book, I have never bought something so quickly based on an email. I will read anything from the Murderbot universe, and basically live in misery that these stories aren’t longer T-T Here, for the first time, we’re seeing things from the perspective of Dr. Mensah, fresh off of her kidnap rescue in Exit […]

Swedish serial killer short stories

An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Turston

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I’m not sure who picked An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good (2018) by Helene Turston for book club, but I do remember that we were all interested in something short. This book includes four short stories originally written in Swedish. They are all about one elderly Swedish woman and the people she kills. I came into this expecting something a little different than what I got, and this is mainly to do with the blurb on Amazon. Maud is an irascible 88-year-old Swedish woman with […]

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

I Would be Doing this Anyway by Jia Tolentino

Rewards by Emma Cline

Crewelwork by Justin Torres

The Tomorrow Box by Curtis Sittenfeld

If You Are Lonely and You Know It by Yiyun Li

The Summer House by Cristina Henriquez

Me and Carlos by Tom Perrotta

Simplexity by Kiley Reid

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Ahh, Lester Bangs. Or at least, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs via Cameron Crowe in Almost Famous. Did I just grab this quote because it features the word “currency”? Well…yes and no. Currency, my latest dive into Amazon Original Stories (but not the latest collection released) describes itself as being about “friends, trends, and dividends”. The link between these eight stories is the currency between people; social, professional, and personal transactions made when money is too much to offer or not enough to cover. The players […]

My high hopes for horror were halted

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez

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I read another one of Enriquez’s collections of short stories, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, earlier this year. I loved that collection so much. In my review, I called it the ‘most effective collection of short stories I [had] ever read’ and a ‘knockout’. I figured that Things We Lost in the Fire would be similar. Unfortunately that is not the case. In Things We Lost in the Fire, we have the same elements in each short story present in the collection of short stories in The Dangers […]



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