Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

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Did you love Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore? Do you love maps? Ok, you will very likely love The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd. Bear in mind though that it won’t *always* be the most logical book, so if you are the kind of person that is driven crazy by magically induced plotholes then it might not be for you. One of my favorite things about this book is that it was inspired by a true historical story about phantom settlements and how cartographers used them […]

When reality plays whack-a-mole

At the End of Your Tether by Adam Smith

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All I want to say about At the End of Your Tether is that it is the result when what seems like reality takes a walk in the other side. I mean, there is no logic to this illogical ride of madness, time travel, alternative realities overlapping and coming of age. Adam Smith, you might be a nice person, but you have one heck of a warped mind. What starts out as a graphic novel of a teen name Ludo moving to the Air Force […]

Corona Days

Honor Thy Father by Gay Talese

Hit and Run by Lawrence Block

The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost

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After two-plus years of successfully evading the coronavirus, it finally caught up to me last week. Fortunately, my symptoms were mild (vaccinated and boosted), the only one lingering was fatigue. That and family responsibilities left me little time to write reviews this past week. So I decided to put these three here instead of my monthly dump because they were all worthy of longer reviews, two good, one damn fine. Honor Thy Father **** One of the things that made The Sopranos such an excellent television […]

The Lost World by Arthur Conan

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

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As a huge fan of Doyle, and knowing the influence this book has had on fantasy, I saw an edition of The Lost World from a printing in the early 1970s at a used book store and immediately purchased it. Oy, what a mistake. I am aware that Holmes has been accused of being misogynistic and there are elements of racism within those books but man did Doyle let his id out of control in this novel. I literally hated every single one of these […]

These were 100% cover reads, but they (mostly) ended up being great!

The Tiger Came to the Mountains (The Trespass Collection, #1) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Wildlife (The Trespass Collection, #2) by Jeff VanderMeer

The Backbone of the World (The Trespass Collection, #3) by Stephen Graham Jones

Stag (The Trespass Collection, #4) by Karen Russell

A Righteous Man (The Trespass Collection, #5) by Tochi Onyebuchi

Bloody Summer (The Trespass Collection, #6) by Carmen Maria Machado

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As mentioned in this post’s title, I saw these covers and immediately went OOOOH. Click click click. Free? Okay! Also, the idea of various genres of story that deal with nature and wildlife clashing with humans appeals to me. I did four of them by audio, and all four narrators were excellent (even for the one I two-starred), and two by Kindle. If you have Prime, they are free for you. Some of them really surprised me! “Wildlife,” by Jeff VanderMeer — 2 STARS This […]

MASTERPIECE.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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I was originally tempted to just post this whole novel as one giant (and perfect) quotation. We knew it was coming but we behaved inconsistently. We stocked up on supplies-just in case-but sent our children to school, because how do you get any work done with the kids at home? (We were still thinking in terms of getting work done. The most shocking thing in retrospect was the degree to which all of us completely missed the point.) One day, when we look back at […]



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