Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

cbr12bingo – Happy!

Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms by John Hodgman

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“Hey, it’s John Hodgman!” John Hodgman used to spend a considerable amount of time on TV. He’s played, in his words, all sorts of “sexless weirds” in TV and commercials alike. He spent time on The Daily Show as, among other things, a deranged billionaire. He left his Daily Show role behind as Trump rose to power, as there is nothing funny anymore about criminally insane rich people.  He isn’t spending too much time on TV at the moment; it’s been years since he was the PC of […]

You gotta do what makes you Happy

Super Powereds: Year 1 by Drew Hayes, read by Kyle McCarley

Super Powereds: Year 2 by Drew Hayes, read by Kyle McCarley

Corpies by Drew Hayes, read by Kyle McCarley

Super Powereds: Year 3 by Drew Hayes, read by Kyle McCarley

Super Powereds: Year 4 by Drew Hayes, read by Kyle McCarley

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I saw somewhere that re-reading or re-watching things we’ve enjoyed in the past is great for anxiety, because you’ve already experienced it.  You know exactly what’s going to happen.  And a pandemic is full of anxiety, so a lot of us have discovered this comfort!*     Someone on Facebook was asking for recommendations for an audiobook to listen in the car with her 13- and 15-year-old sons, so I recommended Super Powereds: Year 1 by Drew Hayes.  I remembered that the story was fantastic and […]

Roll for initiative (CBR12Bingo: Happy)

It's all a game by Tristan Donovan

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Back when I was trying to be a Renaissance Nerd, covering all facets of nerddom, I was invited to play Twilight Imperium, described to me as Babylon 5 meets Risk in a sort of intro to tabletop games. I admittedly didn’t feel the greatest that day, so I likely would have left regardless, but after an hour and a half or so of not much, I apologized and said I’d like to play again sometime. I was then informed “oh, we haven’t started, this was […]

No Room for Exceptions

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

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Keiko, 36 years old, unmarried, and childless, has been working at the same convenience store for the last 18 years. Aware of her own unusualness, she only feels at home in the store where she understands how to interact with people, and how to appear normal. Still, the pressures of society to conform by getting married, having children, or at least getting a more appropriate job, are always present. This is a sweet and short book that is on one hand firmly rooted in Japanese […]

Gloriously Deranged Insanity

Harrow The Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Sorry, but it’s nigh on impossible to discuss this book without mentioning the endgame from Gideon The Ninth. You probably shouldn’t be picking up this book anyhow if you haven’t read Gideon. And if you have read Gideon, perhaps give it a bit of a re-read before embarking on Harrow The Ninth. You will thank me later. This book enjoys being tricky Man, this was one of my most anticipated books of the summer. After the wild ride that was Gideon The Ninth, I was […]

Doctor Ain was recognized on the Omaha-Chicago flight.

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr

Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen

Orange World by Karen Russell

The Fall by Albert Camus

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield

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CBR12Bingo – Gateway (Author) Her Smoke Rose Up Forever: 4/5 Stars This is one of those books that I spent multiple years trying to get myself through. I read one of the stories “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” awhile ago and really liked it. It’s almost like a play on a kind of Twlight Zone type stories with a big twist, but it’s longer and more nuanced and more realized than one of those stories. Instead, it feels like a heavy influence on someone like […]



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