Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An Apocalyptic Treat

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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I was three-quarters through Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven before the panic set in. Up until that point, I was engrossed in Mandel’s tale about an apocalyptic pandemic that killed 99% of those who contracted it, but it hadn’t gotten under my skin per se. In this world, only small groups of people survived the devastating and quick-killing flu, and all the features of civilization had disappeared: electricity, motorized transportation and airplanes, medical facilities, communications, and mechanized industry. As I read on, Mandel’s detailed […]

Interesting, Enjoyable, but Missing Something

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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cbr17bingo – G I liked this book. But. I think I struggle a bit with books for which I can’t quite determine the point, although I recognize they don’t necessarily need a single, clear-cut point (or that I could have just missed it). I did genuinely enjoy this novel of interlocking narratives—a style that the author tends toward. The novel is about how Jonathan Alkaitis’s Ponzi scheme affected a wide range of people, from Vincent (who maintains a throughline of the book), to his employees, […]

“I don’t want to talk about time travel…”

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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“…because if we start talking about it then we’re going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.” Thankfully, Emily St. John Mandel also makes the choice to not get bogged down in discussing time travel. Hell, the last Avengers movie probably does more dissection of the implications and intricacies of time travel than Sea of Tranquility, and I mean that as a compliment. I think Sea of Tranquility is a great example of a “soft science fiction” story in the […]

Emily St John Mandel is So Good.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel

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I am so glad I read this.  I’m always so glad I read ESTM’s books. Told in a series of vignettes, connected only by the recurring appearance of Gaspery, Sea of Tranquility spans hundred of years and doesn’t really have much of a plot beyond “What is life?  And does it matter?”  There’s not a lot there, beyond a faith that meeting and spending time with these characters will have a narrative and emotional payoff.  And yet, it does.  And yet, utterly compelling from end […]

Entertained, But Left Wanting

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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I wanted to like this more than I did. And I did enjoy it, but I was expecting more after having read Sea of Tranquility and seeing how much other Cannonballers like this one. Station Eleven alternates settings between when a flu pandemic starts and 20 years later in the post-apocalyptic world. In the future, Kirsten, one of the main characters, is an actor in The Traveling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians who travel from small town to small town to perform for […]

The Moon Ain’t No Place to Raise a Kid

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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Across centuries, a random and unlikely set of strangers are all connected by a singular anomaly. For mere moments, they experience some sort of disruption to reality. They are suddenly and inexplicably somewhere else before quickly returning to their original position. The experience is so brief they have struggle fully remembering it, and mainly write it off as a worrying delusion. They are: an early 20th century British gentleman, disowned by his family for dissenting politics and exiled to Canada, a young girl obsessed with […]



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