Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Loved this book except for one pretty big thing.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

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Aside from one pretty big complaint, this is one of the most fun books I’ve read this year. I love Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries (a good house party mystery always gets me going). I love when books mess with time. And I love sf elements mashed with other genres. I was worried the ending wouldn’t be able to bring it all together, but it did, with an added element of human emotion that I wasn’t quite expecting. My advice to you on this one is […]

“Fanfiction isn’t copying – it’s a celebration. One long party, from the first capital letter to the last full stop!”

One of Our Thursdays is Missing (Thursday Next, #6) by Jasper Fforde

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This was a good time, but I wasn’t ever able to lose myself in it. Seems fitting for a book I put on my Must Read list in 2011, and then didn’t get to for nine years. Jasper Fforde is always at worst just a good time for me, but sometimes his stuff ascends to the brilliant level; this just wasn’t that for me. This book, to my surprise, doesn’t even follow Thursday, but the written Thursday, formerly known as Thursday5, who failed her Jurisfiction […]

“I was six years old. I was seven hundred and fifty. I was being hunted.”

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

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I have in the past frequently compared books to food because I find it helpful. I love both books and food in the way that only comes from consuming something, putting it inside yourself and making it a part of you, quite literally. There’s the immediate pleasure of the consumption itself, and then there’s the afterward, when the food or the ideas do things to you (good, bad or in between; small or large scale). I have previously compared books to cotton candy and burritos […]

A Monster Take on Sherlock Holmes

A Study In Emerald by Neil Gaiman

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I’m not usually one for graphic novels, but I will read Neil Gaiman’s grocery list, so when my friend brought this over and said ‘you gotta read this,’ I took the opportunity. “A Study In Emerald” closely follows Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original “A Study in Scarlet,” but with cooler characters and monsters. To give anything else of the plot away will spoil the joy of this story too much, so I’ll leave it at that and let those who love Gaiman and Sherlock Holmes […]

cbr12bingo – Pandemic!

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

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Once again, Becky Chambers distills the hope of humanity into the fleeting thoughts of a far-off astronaut. I am, once again, bathed in love and awe. I’m an observer, not a conqueror. I have no interest in changing other worlds to suit me. I choose the lighter touch: changing myself to suit them. Ariadne is more than our narrator, and she’s more than the pilot of her ship. She is our eyes, ears, and heart. She is an equal yet extraordinary piece of her four-person crew. This […]

“Nobody died. how can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?” “Then what died? who are you mourning?” “A point of view.”

The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake by Neil Gaiman

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This is the second time while reading this series I have been sorely tempted to give one of these five stars, and I probably will when I revisit in future. What’s holding me back right now is that for most of this, I was only mildly emotionally engaged, but the very last issue, “The Tempest,” is one of my favorite things in this series, and maybe that Gaiman has ever written. I got a little teary while reading it, and in a different state of […]



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