Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“There is more than one kind of freedom. . . . Freedom to and freedom from.”

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

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I’ve had The Handmaid’s Tale on my shelf for many months now, but I’ve been avoiding starting it. I wanted to read it, but I felt like I had to be in a certain (untroubled) emotional state to face it, and that’s been a tall order these past couple of years. I recently braced myself and got down to business. Of course I already knew the premise: In the near-future, after the U.S. government has been overthrown and replaced by a patriarchal, Cristhian theonomy, women […]

Perhaps all humans are lonely. At least potentially.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

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CBR13 BINGO: Book Club (Obama’s Summer Reading List 2021 & Good Morning America’s Book Club) Ishiguro writes the kind of books that you can’t discuss too much without giving away the plot. In the most simple synopsis: Klara is an artificially intelligent robot that can be purchased to be a child’s bff. Initially showcased in a storefront window, she is soon supplanted by newer models and relegated to lesser and lesser positions in the store. While languishing in a shady corner in the back of […]

Please note you have seen this author before, just under different names. But know that they still love their minions who read their novels. 

Into the Real by Z Brewer

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cbr13bingo They/She/He Into the Real fits the They/She/He category on at least two levels. First, Z Brewer goes by they/them. They have had a journey of self-discovery since their Vladimir Todd series days to this most recent novel. (I am currently reading another book by them that came before this with another name).  And due to the main character, Quinn, taking a journeying to find their own gender identity, eventually learning the word genderqueer, also allows it to fit this category. When Quinn finds themselves bouncing […]

Things are different in Wales

Ivon by Michael Aylwin

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

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CBRBingo – Sportsball and People As I read Ivon, I couldn’t help thinking that this would be a much better book if Jasper Fforde had written it.  Fforde is a master of taking a crazy premise and populating it with such skillfully drawn living breathing humans that the setting becomes real. This is Aylwin’s first novel, and he isn’t there yet. In the world of Ivon, sport is everything.  Set in our future, after a series of pandemics that killed off all but the fittest, almost all of humanity […]

Run, don’t walk, to read this trilogy!

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, 1) by N.K. Jemisin

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And a happy new Cannonball year unto you! It’s my first review of the new year, and as last year my full cannonball slipped through my fingertips I’m hopeful that this is the year…of redemption. But like, also, this is the year of realizing that it’s just a number and as long as I’m reading I’m a winner. Onto my first review! I had already heard of N.K. Jemisin from LeVar Burton Reads, the podcast wherein the ever delightful LeVar Burton reads short stories. He […]

The final work from Tomi Ungerer

Nonstop by Tomi Ungerer

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When I first saw Nonstop by Tomi Ungerer I figured it was going to be an odd little book. Maybe serious, but nothing too drastic. Maybe even funny in a quirky way. Also, I would not have been surprised if it had been a wordless picture book. It had gotten press, but I was thinking since the art was different and the fact it was Ungerer (not to mention his last picture book) that was the reason it was getting attention. Instead, I was slapped […]



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