ben h. winters – Cannonball Read 17

It was nine thirty on Christmas Eve.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Gimpel the Fool by Isaac Bashevis Singer

No Orchids for Miss Blandish by James Hadley Chase

Time and Tide by Frank Conroy

Nature Poem by Tommy Pico

A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow

Inside Stories by Ben H Winters

The Dark Web by Geoff White

Latin History for Morons by John Leguizamo

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London

Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn

Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie

Inadvertent by Karl Ove Knausgard

This Land is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich

Dr Doolittle by Hugh Lofting

Texts from Jane Eyre by Daniel Mallory Ortberg

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

Tom Sawyer Detective by Mark Twain

May 19, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Here’s a whole bunch of kind of (Sorry) short reviews for short books! Pandemic reading!!! The Woman in Black – 3/5 Stars I still think it remains a little silly that this movie had Daniel Radcliffe in it. He was too fresh off of Harry Potter and hadn’t yet made his real transition into adult movies. I think his show “The Young Doctor’s Notebook” was a more successful vehicle for him as it placed him in a transitional role. Anyway, I mention all […]

An alternate history I hadn’t seen before

May 23, 2018 by lowercasesee Leave a Comment

I’m almost caught up! And I’m reading a SUPER long book so I’ll stay caught up. Mothership readers remember than HBO was at one point considering a show called Confederate (helmed by the white-savior-narrative peddlers of Game of Thrones, ugh) that would tell the story of an alternate history of the U.S., a what if the South had won. Underground Airlines has a different alternate history to propose – what if the war had never really been fought, but a truly terrible compromise reached instead? In this history, […]

When Speculative Fiction Speculates All Too Well

December 5, 2017 by Jenny S Leave a Comment

Like many of the books I read, I first heard about Underground Airlines on NPR—in a book review by Maureen Corrigan on Fresh Air. It came out about the same time as Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. Because I read Whitehead’s novel first, that world was rattling through my head as I entered the alternative history that Ben Winter has created—where the civil war never happened and where slavery still exists in the United States, even if it’s only confined to four southern states. It’s […]

An excellent book with a few concerns.

February 6, 2017 by Blingle Bells 3 Comments

I’ll be honest: it really concerned me that this book was written by a white guy. I have hesitations about whether this is entirely his story to tell, and I’d like to hear a POC’s perspective on it. I think it was written and handled well, but I’m saying that will the full awareness that it’s not fully mine to judge. Frankly, this is a story that includes the n-word a lot and presents the first person perspective of a Black man in a world […]

Two books for the price of no thanks

December 31, 2016 by yesknopemaybe Leave a Comment

These two detective stories have made me realize I need to do a better job of picking mystery novels. I’ve been completely spoiled by Tana French who manages to make even the most basic characters interesting. One could even argue that her mystery plots aren’t all that complex or interesting and yet, I’m always enthralled. These two books squandered super interesting premises on garbage characters. Brilliance is a bookish take on the X-Men premise of humans being born with super abilities. These abilities are a […]

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Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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