Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Half Read but Still Reviewable

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

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Just for clarity and full disclosure, I only managed to get through about the first 100 pages of what is 563 page novel before I got distracted and then had to return it to the library. But I still got enough to form some impressions, even if I’m honest, I may not have truly been able to really read the whole thing even if there hadn’t been another hold on the book and I’d have kept it a while longer. The Ministry for the Future […]

It’s like I see the beginning of something and my brain goes right to the end.

The Home I Find With You by Skye Kilaen

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It was profoundly strange to read a dystopian romance set in a United States after a climate change and racism driven civil war while my city and state were going through a climate driven disaster exacerbated by racist policies. If it had been written by another author, I probably would have put it aside as too close to home, but Skye Kilaen was writes with such kindness that it was a balm to read about her characters working together as a community to survive. Set […]

Does my plate really affect the planet?

We are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer

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I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals years ago and found its arguments about reducing meat intake to be convincing. I decided to try an experiment and go vegetarian. I’ve not eaten meat since 2014, and it was the right decision *for me.* In We are the Weather, he expands the argument by noting how our turn to a plant-based diet can have greater ecological impact than electric cars or other climate-change initiatives. The book takes on several parts, some of it more logical in […]

Frustrating.

No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg

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Best for: Those who like to collect books of speeches. In a nutshell: Collection of Thunberg’s speeches, delivered throughout 2018 and 2019 Worth quoting: “You can’t simply make up your own facts, just because you don’t like what you hear.” “Every time we make a decision we should ask ourselves: how will this decision affect that [emission] curve?” Why I chose it: I recently subscribed to the Books That Matter box, and this was included in November’s delivery. Review: How does one review a collection […]

“My book-ordering history is definitely going to get me flagged by some evil government algorithm. Lots and lots of books about Vichy France and the French Resistance and more books than any civilian could possibly need about spy craft and fascism. Luckily, there is a Jean Rhys novel in there and a book for Eli called How to Draw Robots. That’ll throw them off the scent.”

Weather by Jenny Offill

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Jenny Offill’s latest exercise in approaching anxiety with compassion, Weather, kicks off right before the 2016 election. While she isn’t that exact- you come to realization through context clues- the time and feeling is accurate and thick in the air. Just like in Dept. of Speculation, Offill packs years worth of pathos into a collection close to just 200 pages. Her economy of vocabulary is something that I strive to possess. Our narrator is worried about wasting time; she sits on an unfinished masters while answering […]

Is love really the answer in the end?

Dimension W, vol. 16 by Yuji Iwahara

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I did a quick check and I’m a little surprised that I haven’t reviewed a volume of this series before now; I’ve certainly read them all but somehow not reviewed one until the final 16th volume. Dimension W is a manga series, and there was also an anime that covered basically the first two story arcs. The gist is that in the future, the world now relies on energy drawn from Dimension W although what the dimension is and how it works is not well […]



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