Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Its so easy, isn’t it, to decide the people you’re fighting aren’t really human.”

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

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I am counting this book for the Citizen category in the CBR17 Bingo Reading Challenge. The central antagonist of this novel is an empire known as the Radch. The inhabitants of the Radch are known as Radchaii, which translates to either “civilized” or “citizen.” The Radch is benevolent and giving to its citizens, but brutal and violent to outsiders. One of the central themes of the books centers on how people justify atrocities by dehumanizing those they hurt, and how the concept of “citizens” or “civilized […]

“You’ve gotten the taste for excitement and adventure:” Great Sci-Fi/Fantasy by Ann Leckie

Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction by Ann Leckie

Translation State by Ann Leckie

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Ann Leckie is one of those authors that my brain just clicks with so well that I love everything she writes, like a warm bath for my mind. I always feel very comfortable reading her books because I can trust that she’s taking the plot somewhere that will work for me and that I’ll be satisfied with. She may not be on lists of cozy sci-fi, but it’s somehow cozy to me. I was therefore extremely thrilled to see a collection of her short works […]

This broke my brain.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

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Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing. ― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice Ships have feelings. ― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice Nineteen years, three months, and one week before I found Seivarden in the snow, I was a troop carrier orbiting the planet Shis’urna. ― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice One Esk is an ancillary of the sentient ship called Justice of Toren. The ship has human avatars, known as ancillaries, which were acquired via conquest. Justice of […]

What it Means to be My Favourite Alien

Translation State by Ann Leckie

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Have you ever experienced so much anticipation for a book that it you nearly squealed in glee? This is me with Ann Leckie’s Translation State. If Translation State had just been a sequel to her Imperial Radch Trilogy, it would still have been intriguing enough to check out. But Translation State is not just a follow-up to the Radch books—it’s a book that heavily features the Presgr Translators! To keep things vague for anyone who hasn’t yet read the Radch books (and you should), the […]

You don’t have to be what they want you to be.

Translation State by Ann Leckie

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I always make the same mistake with Ann Leckie. I think it’s going to be serious, intellectual science fiction, and it always ends up being a story I can’t put down. When I get to the review writing part, all I seem to be able to write about are the serious intellectual themes, so let me take this time to say that I had a hard time putting this down to do things like earn money and sleep. Early in the book, Reet Hluid’s mother […]

Grabbag

Point to Point Navigation by Gore Vidal

A Sorrow beyond Dreams by Peter Handke

For Colored Girls... by Ntozake Shange

Madea by Euripides

Anthem by Ayn Rand

Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Beowulf by Trans. Heaney

Beowulf by Trans. Headley

Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

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Point to Point Navigation – 4/5 This is a second and shorter memoir by Gore Vidal published a few years before he died. It wasn’t right before his death, but you get the impression that he is saying a last few things at least before he begins to wrap up his writing career. His career began when he was about 19 or so when he began writing what would become his first novel, Williwaw, a WWII short novel about a boat in the North Pacific […]



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