Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“A life lived in a simulation is still a life.”

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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I’ve read Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, so it felt almost inevitable that I would read her latest book. Sea of Tranquility came out this year (2022), and includes a couple of characters that we first met in The Glass Hotel (although it is definitely not necessary to read The Glass Hotel first). I found it to be an interesting, well-written, imaginative novel. St. John Mandel did an impressive job in balancing her different characters and intertwining her storylines. I only had one small issue with the believability of […]

…seeing the way fiction can bleed into the world and leave a mark on someone’s skin.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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HALF CANNONBALL! CBR BINGO: Verse Square (BINGO! Rec’d to Time) (This book is part of the “Mandelverse” along with Station Eleven and Glass Hotel: pandemics, Shakespeare, violins, stories, airports, and heartbreaking connections between seemingly disparate characters.) I’m so late to the party on this one, but I’ll add mine to the pile of reviews. This small little novel holds four big stories spanning just as many centuries. In the early 20th century, a young man whose brother will inherit the family estate in England is unceremoniously sent to Canada after […]

A meta tale of time and paradoxes

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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You get the feeling that Emily St. John Mandel is not content to rest on her laurels. She not only one-ups herself with every book, she challenges the reader to accept that she’s not going to do what’s expected of her. These qualities make her a delightful author to follow. St. John Mandel has taken her usual formula of several characters spread out over geography, woven through time, effecting one another in ways they can neither perceive nor imagine, and inserted a version of herself […]

Joining the Club

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

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What can I say about this book that hasn’t already been said about it by our community? It’s awesome? It took me too long to pick it up? The one advantage to waiting as long as I did, was that the spiritual sequel, Sea of Tranquility, was out by then and I could take in more of the characters from Mandel’s world as soon as I finished this one. Like all things St. John Mandel writes, The Glass Hotel is an intricately woven tale of […]

“This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death.”

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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Cannonball Read Book Square: Funky In one word: Tether Reading St. John Mandel I’m reminded of the scene in the AMAZING movie Booksmart, wherein two college-bound BFFs are determined to make up for lost time and live it up the night before their high school graduation. In one of my favorite scenes, best friends Molly and Amy are getting ready to go out and hyping each other up for their respective outfits, aggressively hurling positive affirmations at each other. “Who gave you permission to take […]

I don’t want to review this, f*** you.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

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30 Books in 30 Days, Vol. 2 Book 28/30 It’s too good! I loved it too much! This is like how I put off watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier because I love Bucky too much. My feelings, THEY CANNOT BE CONTAINED WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME CONTAIN THEM. I was going to try and re-read this before I reviewed it to try and make some thoughts more thoughtful and coherent, but I just don’t have the time right now, even though […]



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