Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

snapshot of a sculpture

Galatea by Madeline Miller

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We’ve heard his story countless times; it’s been a well-trod myth since Ancient Greece. We read Metamorphoses, we studied Pygmalion, we sung along to My Fair Lady, and we mourned the short life of (the terribly named but very good) Selfie. With Madeline Miller, Pygmalion strikes again. He strikes the marble into a statue, the statue becomes a woman, Galatea strikes out on her own, and Pygmalion strikes her down. Galatea is convalescing (read: held captive) in a hospital by the sea. She is cut off from her daughter, […]

All hits, no misses

Hits and Misses by Simon Rich

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I love Simon Rich so much, I’m honestly wondering what he could write that I’d give a bad review to. I first was introduced to his writing with a reading on NPR of “Unprotected,” a short story written from the perspective of a neglected condom in a man’s wallet, which was 10000% funnier than it had a right to be. I then went out and bought every book I could find with his name on it. So when I went to the bookstore to sell […]

Escape From the Present with… THE FUTURE!

Ark by Veronica Roth

Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin

The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay

Randomize by Andy Weir

You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towlesl

Summer Frost by Blake Crouch

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And you know what? The future isn’t that bad! Well, it is full of disasters- pandemic, plague, asteroids, climate change, robot uprising -but there are always sparks of humanity ready to push through none the less. Amazon’s Forward collection, a group of five short stories from some big names, throw some big ideas out into the universe and let you, in a way, choose your own adventure! I suppose there is a “correct” order in which to read these, but I didn’t bother. I don’t think […]

Tales from the Bottom of a Winter Coat Pocket

Tales from the Folly by Ben Aaronovitch

The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch

The October Man by Ben Aaronovitch

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Sometimes you find a bunch of cough drop wrappers when you dig into pockets of coats put away for the season, and sometimes you find a twenty dollar bill. Imagine my delight when Tales from the Folly popped up on Scribd! I devoured the series earlier this year -aside from the latest; I am waiting for the paperback release- and when I saw kittenkong42’s review back in October I was PSYCHED to know that the short stories had all been collected into one place! There […]

Some big hits and major misses in an overall forgettable collection

Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane by Jonathan Oliver

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Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, edited by Jonathan Oliver, is an anthology of short stories centered around magic in all its various forms: ancient folk magic, new age witchcraft, stage magic, and even some techno-magic. There are 15 short stories in this collection, and, over all, this anthology is fine. Too often, the stories told are not short stories but rather truncated ones. For many of the stories, it feels as though the authors were limited by a page or word maximum […]

“It is very important to approach all unpleasant tasks in life as a performance art piece, especially if you are a teenager.”

Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country & Other Stories by Chavisa Woods

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Goth or not, country or not, if you have ever been a teenager then SOMETHING in this collection of stories will speak to you. Maybe you’ve never befriended a drug addict squatting in a mausoleum, and maybe you’ve never had a bad trip at a MENSA party hosted by your girlfriend’s parents, but there are definitely some teenage feelings rolling dark and deep in all of us! Chavis Woods has labeled and celebrated that feeling of “something more”; most notably in the titular story, “Things […]



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