Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Obsession Is Not Love, Says Local Woman in Dystopian Setting

Anna by Sammy HK Smith

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A woman has survived alone in the aftermath of the apocalypse for years, but when she is taken captive by a sadistic man her life undergoes a much more personal upheaval. The premise of this book is gut-wrenching. In the dystopian wasteland that the world has become after a series of wars and natural disasters, the protagonist has managed to survive on her own, but a moment’s inattention leads to her being captured by a man. This man becomes obsessed with her, keeping her as […]

Sliding Wars

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver

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Lionel Shriver is never afraid to get down into the muck of humanity and ask the hard questions. Weight gain, overpopulation, school shootings, exercise addiction – every book I’ve read of hers has conjured up strong and uncomfortable emotions. Yet I found The Post-Birthday World to be uncomfortable in a slightly different way, as it examines a quieter and more domestic question of ‘what if?’. The protagonist of this tale, Irina, is a 40-something USA expat living with her long-term partner in London. She is […]

Queer Found Family with a Human Murderbot on a Three Fish Ship in Space

You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo

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This is one of those books where I wonder if the entire reason the title was only chosen to set up an obvious but still kind of funny gag that goes entirely unacknowledged in the book. You Sexy Thing is actually the name of a bioship, basically an organic, kind of sentient spaceship; it’s current owner, slightly mysterious uber wealthy Arpat Takraven, set a password that’s incredibly obvious given the ship’s name, but there’s never any explanation for the origins of the ship’s name or […]

Klara and the Sun

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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DNF at 15 percent. I tried you guys. I tried so hard. But after sitting in the house and watching the snowflakes on Sunday, I just had to give this one up at 15 percent. I know I should be enthralled by this, but I was so bored, and kept getting distracted. I feel like I should be tossed in book jail for not finishing this one and not enjoying it. “Klara and the Sun” follows an artificial intelligence (Klara) who is an Artificial Friend. […]

“I am the one thing you can never kill. I am hope.”

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson

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I’m taking a break from my Diana Wynne Jones challenge to read different fantasy. Thanks to my wonderful Book Exchange partner, I was gifted the full Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson and have been chomping at the bit to dig into it. I lost a lot of sleep over this book, it was just too good to only read for a half hour before bed, and as dense and heavy as Sanderson often is, this book blew by. Mistborn introduces us to the Final Empire, a pseudo […]

From the Plains of Texas to the Mountains of India

Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

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The thing that I don’t think people who have not read Neal Stephenson understand about his writing is that it is pulpy and action packed. They see the size of a book like Termination Shock, read the description, and think—oh this is gonna be some heavy shit. And sure, he does go into multi-page digressions about whatever his current research obsession is, but that is also interspersed with plane crashes and people shooting boars out of helicopters. He starts Seven Eves with blowing up the […]



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