3.5 stars I think the fact that I read this book in a feverish cram session over the course of two days (to prepare for the CBR8 Book Club discussion) had a lot to do with how much I enjoyed it, which is to say that by necessity, I skimmed over anything that just wasn’t jumping out as MEGA IMPORTANT and, in real-time, was kind of minimizing how much of that material existed or how often that happened. In hindsight, it was actually rather frequently. […]
Book Club Discussion Post: Doomsday Book
Welcome to our June Book Discussion of Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. It looks like lots of you have read this book and are ready to chat about it with your fellow readers. I’ve been looking forward to having this discussion since I finished the book. Let’s dig in! But first, let’s start with a few ground rules: Since we’re anticipating lots of conversation, please try your best to reply directly to each other, that way they are alerted and can keep discussing! Discussing is […]
In which I refer to multiple characters as dumb, ass, or dumbass
Like everyone else, I’m putting up my review to Doomsday Book. This also makes me the fifth person to post it the day before our book club discussion! Procrastinators unite! Anyway, I started writing my review as I was reading, so this is more a reaction than a review, I suppose. And we all know the plot by now. Ahem… 50 pages in – Nothing too bad has happened yet. I’m concerned for the tech who collapsed. I think our heroine is a kind of […]
There’s someone in your corner all the way across the sea
So, my “rule” this Cannonball was that, after finishing a book, I had to at least write a draft of a review before moving on to the next book. This worked really well for a while, and every time I’d go to post a review, I’d have a folder full of drafts to choose from. Finishing the reviews became fairly easy, because my thoughts were already there, so even if it’d been weeks (or, let’s be honest, months) since I finished the book, at least […]
Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!
You know that scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the man with the death cart enters the plague-ridden village to pick up all of the day’s bodies? This scene? That’s pretty much all I could think about while I read Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book. I think by now, most of us know the plot, so I’ll be brief. In the future (around 2054), scientists at Oxford University are sending historians back through history. Some sort of time “net” has been created, and […]
Book Club Reads Science Fiction – voting for June
(Note: Voting is closed, and Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is the selection. Join us on June 1 to discuss this book about time travel. — MsWas) Hello Everyone! After a slightly bumpy start this spring, we are at it again with another Cannonball Book Club vote. Our summer Cannonball Book Club Reads selection will be Science Fiction. Since part of the raison d’etre for this book club is to highlight various genres and hopefully get ‘ballers to read new things, we’ll tackle Science Fiction […]