Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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“In a sense life in the high-rise had begun to resemble the world outside – there were the same ruthlessness and aggression concealed within a set of polite conventions.”

High Rise by J.G. Ballard

November 8, 2025 by bjornsnipe Leave a Comment

Let the psychotics take over. They alone understood what was happening. This book is why Good Omens has the quote, “It has been said that civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism” in it. It opens with someone eating an Alsatian, which tells you all you need to know about where this is going. The first time I had anything to do with High Rise is when I was laid up with Bell’s palsy and listened to the audiobook narrated by Tom […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Dystopian, humans being horrible, J.G. Ballard

bjornsnipe's CBR17 Review No:147 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Dystopian, humans being horrible, J.G. Ballard ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

JG Ballard

Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard

April 19, 2023 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

“Wars came early to Shaghai, overtaking each other like the tides that raced up the Yangtze and returned to this gaudy city all the coffins cast adrift from the funeral piers of the Chinese Bund.” This a roman a clef more or less by J.G. Ballard, or even something close to a kind of autofiction or memoir/novel based on his experiences as an adolescent living in Shanghai, the son of British colonial figures, at the start of World War II, and eventually his time in […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: J.G. Ballard

vel veeter's CBR15 Review No:263 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: J.G. Ballard ·
· 0 Comments

High-Rise

High-Rise by J.G. Ballard

August 10, 2022 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

I first read this novel after I saw the initial trailer for the Tom Hiddleston movie version a few years back. I liked it fine. But since then, I’ve read a half dozen or more of Ballard’s novels, and all of his short fiction, and I think I have his wavelength (dear god, right?) quite a bit more now. I liked it a lot more the second time. The novel takes place in a all-inclusive high-rise replete with gyms, grocery stores, and other amenities. If […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: J.G. Ballard

vel veeter's CBR14 Review No:455 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: J.G. Ballard ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Suddenly, he felt a paradoxical sense of loyalty…

The Complete Stories of JG Ballard by JG Ballard

December 30, 2018 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how to talk about 98 short stories written over 40 years. But this was an interesting and exhausting reading experience. There’s a lot going on here. So to begin at the beginning, JG Ballard was a British science fiction writer, known mostly to me via the 1995 David Cronenberg movie Crash and the Stephen Spielberg’s movie Empire of the Sun. A few years ago I saw the trailer for High Rise and was blown away. The movie itself is not […]

Filed Under: Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Speculative Fiction Tagged With: J.G. Ballard, the complete stories of jg ballard

vel veeter's CBR10 Review No:484 · Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Speculative Fiction · Tags: J.G. Ballard, the complete stories of jg ballard ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

Hi. I’m Badkittyuno, and I’ve fallen behind again…

July 27, 2017 by badkittyuno 5 Comments

Hi. Sorry. I really thought I was like 10 reviews behind and it turned out to actually be 19. So then I started up this list of reviews…and didn’t post it…and now I’m 26 behind. I would blame my kids/divorce/life, but really — I’d much rather read than write! Also, I’ve been working from home a lot and doing laundry instead of writing reviews (which is what I do when I get bored at the office), so that’s not helping. Anyway, here’s 26 brief reviews […]

Filed Under: Biography/Memoir, Comedy/Humor, Fantasy, Fiction, History, Horror, Non-Fiction, Young Adult Tagged With: A.S. King, Andrew Smith, Angie Thomas, anthony bourdain, CeeLo Green, Charles Yu, Dava Sobel, Gabourey Sidibe, J.G. Ballard, Jeffrey Tambor, Jennifer McMahon, Lindy West, Lyndsay Faye, Marc Summers, Margaret Atwood, Mark Kurlansky, Michael Oher, Nathan Rabin, Neil Armstrong, Neil Gaiman, Nick Offerman, Ruth Wariner, Samantha Irby, Sarah Forbes, Seanan McGuire, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett

badkittyuno's CBR9 Review No:158 · Genres: Biography/Memoir, Comedy/Humor, Fantasy, Fiction, History, Horror, Non-Fiction, Young Adult · Tags: A.S. King, Andrew Smith, Angie Thomas, anthony bourdain, CeeLo Green, Charles Yu, Dava Sobel, Gabourey Sidibe, J.G. Ballard, Jeffrey Tambor, Jennifer McMahon, Lindy West, Lyndsay Faye, Marc Summers, Margaret Atwood, Mark Kurlansky, Michael Oher, Nathan Rabin, Neil Armstrong, Neil Gaiman, Nick Offerman, Ruth Wariner, Samantha Irby, Sarah Forbes, Seanan McGuire, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett ·
Rating:
· 5 Comments

Consumerism and total social decay: contained in an apartment.

June 30, 2016 by bonnie 1 Comment

My sister read J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise and then wrote a rave review on Goodreads, calling it a sort of adult version of Lord of the Flies, set in a high-rise apartment building. I was sufficiently intrigued, and also by the news of a recent movie adaptation. You know me—read book first, then watch movie. So I read this book in an evening, while The Chancellor was under an enormous time crunch to get his final grades in. I decided to stay up and be supportive, […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: bonnie, Dystopian, J.G. Ballard

bonnie's CBR8 Review No:66 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: bonnie, Dystopian, J.G. Ballard ·
Rating:
· 1 Comment
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