Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Some Legends Don’t Withstand the Test of Time

Bram Stoker's Dracula by Bram Stoker, Edited by Jan Needle

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Full disclosure, I had no idea I’d ordered the edited and abridged version from the library, but I decided to give it a go anyway since the abridged version was still some 400 pages. I never had to read “Dracula” in school, and while, like most people, I’m aware of the general premise of the story, my goal of reading at least one classic a year put this on my spooky-reads list for Halloween. Long story short, A real estate agent, Jonathan Harker, goes to […]

Brave New World. Meh.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

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I’ve been curious about this book for a long time. 1984 by George Orwell was one of my favorite books as an adolescent, and Brave New World is often mentioned in the same breath. So when I found a Brave New World mini-series, I thought I’d check it out.  The mini-series stars Jessica Brown Findlay (Lady Sybil from Downton Abbey), Harry Lloyd (Viserys Targaryen from GOT), and Alden Ehrenreich (Young Han Solo from Solo), and it tells the story of a “utopic” future London where […]

“For a being as sophisticated as you are, it is baffling how little understanding you have of the composition of your own mind.”

Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #5) by Martha Wells

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It has been almost three years since I last ventured into the land of Murderbot (January 2019) and while I had to wait like everyone else for Network Effect to publish, I also put it off a little while, over a year in fact. I blame Pandemic brain. Because the minute I picked this one up, I was back with Murderbot and it felt like almost no time at all since I last visited this part of fictional space. Murderbot is still working out this […]

“well they’re all good dogs” …or stories

The Year's Best Science Fiction volume 2 by Jonathan Strahan

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I adore short story collections, and I was particularly impressed by last year’s anthology edited by Jonathan Strahan. It follows the same format as last year, with the editor’s introduction including other recommended reading as well as general comments on the state of the publishing industry in 2020. And then we get into the real meat of it: 27 short stories that are, arguably, the best of the year. While some stories missed the mark a bit for me, they were all well-written and interesting. “well […]

An excellent spec fiction anthology

The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021) by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

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I absolutely adore speculative fiction anthologies, so when I saw that both C.L. Clark and T.L. Huchu had stories in this one, I had to read it. This is a collection of twenty-nine stories from 2020 told by African or African diaspora writers, a good mix of science fiction, fantasy and horror. There are stories that deal with age-old problems like racism and parenthood and newer ones like climate change and gentrification, from robot revolutions to vengeful djinn. Most of the stories were a solid […]

Playing Catchup

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Night Train by David Quantick

The Lost Village by Camilla Sten

Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

Imposter Syndrome by Kathy Wang

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Listen, sometimes you graduate from college, panic about your future, land a job, and move to a new city and even though you’re reading a couple books a month you forget about the whole reviewing part. I’ve still got 6 more reviews to write from May-September reads, but here are a few from May and October. (I wrote half of the May ones in May so they might be a little outdated. A group of housewives in a suburb of Charleston, SC in the 90s […]



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