Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Academic Fiction at it’s Best but also Worst

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

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It’s probably been 15 years since I’ve read anything substantial by Umberto Eco. I’m pretty sure I was maybe a sophomore or junior in college the first time I read The Name of the Rose. Now, I find myself in the position of needing to reread it for a work-related event. In the intervening decade and a half, I’ve gotten a lot better at Latin, and I’ve also been exposed to a lot more primary source material concerning theology, philosophy, science, literature, and history of the […]

Lucas and Russian Spies

Hidden Prey by John Sandford

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Yeah this book actually deals with Russian spies. Who knew how timely a read this would be for a book that was published back in 2004. The whole Russia thing was a non-starter for me. It just doesn’t work and it feels like Lucas is going through the motions. He has a new female Russia spymaster (or whatever she is) along for the ride as Lucas investigates why a man was murdered with ties to Russia. The only interesting to me in this one was […]

Nightmares and Dreamscapes

Cinnamon Kiss by Walter Mosley

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Dreams have always featured heavily in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series. But this one in particular had a lot of dream sequences and descriptions of dreams. It kind of wore on me after awhile; I felt like Mosley was trying to stuff extra scenes to raise his page count since the plot was so thin. I don’t know what it’s like dealing with publishers but note to writers: if you can get away with a good story in 190 or 220 pages, it’s cool. I […]

Everyone’s a little bit garbage sometimes.

Grist Mill Road by Christopher Yates

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Grist Mill Road is the small side road that leads to the front door of Hannah’s family’s enormous home in 1982. The summer of that year, Hannah will lose her left eye to an unthinkable crime, and her middle school crush, Matthew, will be responsible. By 2008, Hannah is married to Patrick, Matthew’s former best friend, who has recently lost his job. The two never discuss the events of 1982, along with… some other things. In 2008, the three meet again, and as their secrets […]

Roadtrippin’

Bordersnakes by James Crumley

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James Crumley made his bones with his novel The Last Good Kiss. In between the publication of that and the publication of this, he wrote one Milo and one Shugrue book respectively over the course of 18 years. Aside from a short story collection, that’s it. I don’t know Crumley’s deal; I’ve only read a couple of interviews he’s done but my guess is he caught lightening in a bottle with TLGK and knew he couldn’t write it again, though he wanted to. He must’ve gotten to a point […]

And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

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The first of the Southern Reach Trilogy is probably very familiar to most Cannonballers, so I won’t spend too long summarizing. A group of four women experts are sent in to investigate Area X, an environmental anomaly that has subsumed and remade a section of coast and wilderness and seems to be expanding. Theirs is the latest in a string of failed expeditions, after previous groups of men have either never returned, or come back changed. The women are given no names, only titles, and […]



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