Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Too much and not enough

Songs for the End of the World by Saleema Nawaz

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I wanted to like this book, but so much of it was a slog. It’s about a pandemic, coincidentally taking place over the fall and early winter of 2021, and yet unfolding at a slightly different rate than the one that hit us all in 2019. Nawaz can’t be blamed for getting some of the mundane aspects of quarantine wrong, although much of her understanding of how cities, states and countries respond with various measures that may or may not be effective bares a certain […]

How we remember the future

Tales From The Loop by Simon Stalenhag

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I got into this book in the most backward way possible. I was looking for more Phillip Glass music, when I found his score for the show; so then I watched the show; then I bought the book. But it speaks to the quality of it that, as I flipped through the pages and looked at the vignettes and the memory-style stories, I put Glass’s music on and it matched perfectly. You may remember a few years back when a series of paintings of retro-style […]

A believable and scary postapocalyptic future

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

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In this post-apocalyptic novel, there is not single earth shattering apocalyptic event.  Instead, there is just a gradual breakdown of society brought about by climate change, corporate greed and social inequality (all interrelated anyway).    Lauren Olamina is a relatively privileged teenager living in a small walled enclave.  She’s privileged in that she has a home, her father still has a job with a salary, and she knows how to read and write.  This is not much, but compared to the thousands, or maybe millions […]

A Classic Meh on the Reread

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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I’m pretty sure the first time I read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I was probably in my teens and reading it on my father’s recommendation. Dad seemed to want to introduce his kids to at least basic classic sci-fi, although I still don’t get his appreciation for William Gibson. So I figured since there’s a book club coming up where this is an option, it might be time for a re-read. My basic impression is that I can see why this is the classic […]

Afflicted by a hero.

Dune Messiah (Dune, #2) by Frank Herbert

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Hoo boy, talk about conflicting thoughts and feelings. This book (at least my edition) starts with an introduction by Frank Herbert’s son, Brian, who has shepherded the world of Dune since his father’s death, co-writing books with Kevin J. Anderson and making sure his father’s stories and legacy are safe. This is nice of him! He clearly admired his father very much. Anyway, in the intro, he posits that Dune Messiah wasn’t nearly as well-received by fans and critics because Herbert does something unique to […]

But did they try more cowbell?

Severance by Ling Ma

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In the spirit of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good/adequate/completed review, I’m just going to try and get my thoughts down about this book. Severance was one of my it’s->$4.99-on-Kindle-so-if-I-have-even-the-vaguest-interest-I-will-buy-it impulse purchases. I read the critics’ reviews on Amazon and friends’ ratings on Goodreads, skimmed the free sample to get a sense of what it was about, and was hooked. Unfortunately, my interest had waned by about the third chapter. Severance, which was written in 2018, takes place in 2011 and […]



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