Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Why has it taken me this long to read this masterpiece?

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

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The country is on the brink of anarchy. Technically, there are still local, state, and federal governments but they aren’t able to handle many if any of the nation’s problems. Unemployment, homelessness, illness, drug abuse are all rampant. Because of these woes, individuals frequently turn to drugs and/or violence to try and solve their problems. But for 18 year old Lauren, her family, and her cul-de-sac, they turn to each other. They have walled off their road and turn to each other for protection and […]

Beware: At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease.

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

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  Octavia Butler’s sequel to Parable of the Sower is no less prophetic than its predecessor. The language is raw and unsparing but never revels in the pain the characters go through. It is also not without its small moments of joy. The found family of Earthseed is put to the test in this book and though they do not come away unscathed they manage to survive because of their strong bonds of community and love for one another. The story picks up five years […]

Octavia Butler Predicted MAGA

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

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Cbr13bingo Reader’s Choice (sub for New Series), bingo #12 Book two of Octavia Butler’s Earthseed Series delivers an astounding gut punch follow-up to Parable of the Sower. Her imagining of what would happen in America’s future is frighteningly accurate. Set in the 2030s and beyond, Parable of the Talents takes us back to Northern California and the Earthseed community known as Acorn. Lauren Oya Olamina and her followers have escaped the upheaval and violence of Southern California and built a commune based on the principles […]

Gateway to Science Fiction and Octavia Butler

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

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Cbr13bingo Gateway, Bingo #9-11 (horizontal, vertical and inner square) Parable of the Sower (1993) is an astoundingly prescient work of science fiction. Octavia Butler (1947-2006), winner of Nebula, Hugo and MacArthur prizes, tells the story of hyperempath Lauren Olamina in mid-2020s California. I reviewed this novel for the 2015 Cannonball Read, and I do believe that it (or really any written by Butler) would be a Gateway to reading more sci-fi/fantasy, and I hope a Gateway to reading more by Butler. Butler writes powerfully and […]

Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler (1993)

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

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I think I distinctly remember this novel as being a clear post-apocalyptic novel when I first read in about 2001 or so. Maybe it was my own age then (20) versus my age now (39) and maybe it was the sense of a different time then (though I don’t know for sure if it was pre or post 9/11), but this felt impossibly far away. Now, approaching the actual date of the novel, it’s so clearly not a post-apocalypse novel and more so either a […]

Bloodchild and Other Stores – Octavia E Butler (1995)

Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler

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This is the second time I’ve read this book, and given that thee stories are linked to endnotes and afterwords by Octavia Butler, it’s a valuable book for a lot of reasons, reading the stories themselves, not always. Butler tells us in the opening introduction that for the most part, she’s not a short story writer. She suggests that a lot of short stories either end up becoming novels, or are clearly novel openings that need to be abandoned, and this collection sometimes feels like […]



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