Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“But you, you’re special I might let you”

Inspection by Josh Malerman

by Leave a Comment

  The concept of this book is an interesting one; take 26 girls and 26 boys and raise them completely isolated not just from the outside world but from the opposite sex. They have no knowledge that such a thing exists. The premise of the two rich weirdos enact the plan is that without the “distraction” of sexuality they will become prodigies and high achievers. The fact that sexuality is fluid apparently never occurs to these two. When the book begins the children are twelve […]

Go Fund Yourself. (illustrated, bingo)

Crowded by Christopher Sebela, Ro Stein, Ted Brandt

by 1 Comment

Let’s lead with this – this is the best book I’ve reviewed for CBR11. Go buy it, it’s good. I’m breaking one of my self-imposed rules for CBR here. I am a MAJOR comic book reader. I love them. I literally have three bookshelves devoted solely to my comics after having pared the collection down to just the essentials, my local comics purveyors know my life, I once started to estimate how much I spent on the comic books I have and shut that down […]

I Have Always Imagined that Paradise Will Be a Kind of Library

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

by 2 Comments

Have you ever felt that a book was written just for you? Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is my Platonic ideal: a novel by an Elder Millennial, set in an alternate San Francisco Bay Area populated by talented, curious people, weird-but-plausible technologies, and endless shelves of books. By the time I discovered the in-story trilogy of fantasy novels and the credible centuries-old secret society, I committed to becoming a Sloan completist. Our initially hapless first-person hero Clay Jannon is looking for a job, any job. His […]

Gold Fame Citrus

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins

by 1 Comment

I’m not sure about this book. It took me a long time to read (nearly six weeks) and I stopped mid-way and didn’t touch it for nearly three weeks, until finishing the last 150 pages in one night. In general, I’m not averse to unlikable protagonists, end of the world settings, or literary prose, but there were times with this book where I really felt myself questioning whether or not I do like those things, or if I just want to like those things so […]

Really Unreal (pun intended)

The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey

by Leave a Comment

Bingo 15 (Far and Away) What makes The Grand Dark so interesting is that there’s a lot of recognizable elements to it, but at the same time it’s so very much not reality. Overall, this is a creepy but intriguing world because bits are familiar, but then the rest is either too vague or too unnatural. That’s what makes the whole thing, the setting and the story, something you recognize and at the same time really different- the unfamiliar familiar. It’s also a world apart […]

CBR11Bingo: Award Winner (and 2 others)

Vox by Christina Dalcher

Dry by Neal Shusterman, Jarrod Shusterman

The Dispatcher by John Scalzi, Zachary Quinto (Narrator)

by 2 Comments

I’ve grouped 3 reviews here — all are “in the not so distant future, the world will be even shittier than it is now” stories. John Scalzi’s The Dispatcher won an Audie for Zachary Quinto’s narration, so that’s my “Award Winner!” Square. Vox by Christina Dalcher I don’t normally read books that have a less than 3.8 rating on Goodreads. That seems to be about my threshold for enjoying something. Vox has about a 3.6, but it was highly recommended on THIS site so I […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo