Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Not what Schrödinger had in mind, but I’ll take it

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

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Jason Dessen is a physics professor at a local college. He lives in Chicago with his wife Daniela and his son Charlie. Once upon a time, Jason was a promising young scientist, destined for greatness, who gave it all up when his girlfriend turned out to be pregnant. Jason’s life is not unpleasant, but it is dull and sedate and the what-ifs occasionally nag at the back of his head. But then, suddenly, Jason is abducted at gunpoint. His assailant stabs him with a syringe. […]

Too Many Jasons

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

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Jason Dessen is a physics professor at a low-level university, living in Chicago with his art teacher wife Daniela and their teenage son Charlie. Jason and Daniela had high hopes for their careers once upon a time, but an unplanned pregnancy knocked them a bit off course. Now, they have a happy home life that is just a bit tinged with regret for what might have been. One night Jason reluctantly heads out to a bar to congratulate an old friend for winning a prestigious […]

“It’s terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches off into a new world.”

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

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I had been telling people for years that I didn’t like this book. Recently when I asked a friend for a recommendation of something I could read when I ran, she suggested it and I again gave it a “meh, didn’t love it.” Imagine my surprise when I figured out I had not, in fact, read this book at all. (My sincerest apologies to Blake Crouch). I conflated this book (cover on the left) with Geek Love (cover on the right), about a family of […]

A Meh Sci-Fi Thriller That Disappoints

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

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The most I can say for this is it’s a fast read. Honestly, I can barely remember anything about the plot beyond me being mad I was continuing to read it because I knew I was close to being done and could just power through. The pull quotes on the back are from such big authors — Harlan Coben, Lee Child, Andy Weir, Justin Cronin — that I was expecting a pretty groundbreaking sci-fi thriller, but I wasn’t impressed. It moves quickly but maybe I’ve […]

A warning on what we could become – Told as a futuristic thriller

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

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GENE EDITING IS A FEDERAL CRIME #GPA ONE MISTAKE CAUSED THE GREAT STARVATION #GPA #NEVERFORGET These are billboards you would pass if you lived in Denver Colorado in the far enough future that gene editing technology is much further advanced, but not so far that hashtags aren’t still a thing. The benefits to this technology include clothes made with spider silk and improvements in medicine and agriculture. But there is also a darker side, where dolls can be wrapped in human muscle and skin and […]

“Maybe compassion and empathy are just squishy emotions. Illusions created by our mirror neurons. But does it really matter where they come from? They make us human. They might be what make us worth saving.”

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

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This hit the spot. Sometimes you just need a book you can zoom through. Short chapters, intriguing and freaky plot, simple prose, high stakes. Blake Crouch always delivers. I think I like this book less than Dark Matter but more than Recursion. It helped that for once there were zero nuclear bombs present. This takes place in the near future, when genetic research and technology has been banned almost completely, excepting a few highly regulated government sponsored programs, due to a disaster caused by genetic […]



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