Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

There’s Something About Mary

Mary B: A Novel by Katherine J. Chen

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Cbr16bingo fanfic  As I have mentioned in previous reviews, I love Pride and Prejudice. It’s one of my favorite novels of all time. I have read and enjoyed several re-tellings of the novel, such as Jo Baker’s Longbourn, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible, and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I guess those are “fanfics,” but when I think of fanfic, I think of stories like All the Young Dudes, which use a famous novel as a jump off point to imagine life beyond the original […]

A Gaslamp-Inspired Sci-Fi Mystery

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

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The Mimicking of Known Successes imagines a future where humanity, having completely wrecked Earth and then Mars, has settled on the rings of Jupiter. The entire civilization lives on a series of platforms orbiting above the gas planet, connected to one another across the rings by a series of rail lines. On one of the most distant platforms a man has gone missing. He seems to have stepped off the platform to his death, but why? Inspector Mossa follows his trail back to the university […]

Who Makes Important Life Decisions Via a Children’s Game?

Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney

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Amelia and Adam are a married couple going on a weekend getaway in an attempt to fix their crumbling relationship. Amelia won a weekend stay at a converted chapel in the Scottish Highlands, and it seems like their best chance to try to fix what has gone wrong in their marriage. But both Amelia and Adam are keeping secrets from one another, and someone else has their own plan for how this weekend will go. Ok, so I was definitely interested in the premise. I […]

“Dreams, they’re for those who sleep”

The Virgin Suicides (1993) by Jeffrey Eugenides

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Content note: The novel contains graphic death scenes and deals with suicide extensively. This review also discusses suicide  and death quite briefly. Bingo square: Earth day: the novel deals with pollution and decay and environmental ruin I was by way of being a movie buff for a while in the early 2000s (which is how I found Pajiba), and I watched Sofia Coppola’s 1999 adaptation of The Virgin Suicides then, and read the book afterwards. I think it was that way around–I remember being surprised […]

Follow the nursery rhyme

Keisari Seisoo Palatsissaan (The Emperor Stands in His Palace) (1971) by Eeva Tenhunen

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Bingo square ‘Golden’: A famous author’s literary legacy looms large–and lucrative.  It is criminal that the work of Eeva Tenhunen (1937-2017) is out of print and untranslated. Described in her day (she published her novels between 1964 and 1987) as ‘Finland’s Agatha Christie’, you can see the influence of the English Golden Age of detective fiction: a country house and its rituals, a disruptive outsider, and a seething bubbling crucible of familial and marital tensions, class and political differences, and deep dark secrets. Tenhunen swaps […]

Seeking revenge, making friends

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

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CBR16 BINGO: Scandal, because Murderbot is seeking to uncover all sorts of illegal activities by the GrayCris Corporation Having recently joined the ranks of the Murderbot fandom, I’m eagerly frolicking my way through the series. While the third installment, Rogue Protocol, struck my fancy less than the first two installments, it’s still a good time and I’m itching for more. In Rogue Protocol, the construct known fondly by us readers as Murderbot and by others as SecUnit is still gathering evidence that the GrayCris Corporation […]



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