Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

We learned nothing.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World by Laura Spinney

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I read The Great Influenza a few months ago after coming across it. I think I would have read it regardless of the current pandemic as I still believe my knowledge of the world in the WWI era to be lacking. The Great Influenza focuses on the Spanish Flu and its impact in the United States. It also details the history of medicine and virology, specifically as it pertains to the flu. The book is long and comprehensive but I really enjoyed it.  It really […]

Pandemic Through My Generation

Severance by Ling Ma

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I tried to read this gem the first few weeks after the pandemic broke out in New York. Couldn’t do it. As it is significantly better than the other pandemic reads (Killing Williamsburg and Zone One), the fact that it dealt with a terrifying virus from China was hitting too close to home. It took months to work up the gumption to return to it. And I’m glad I did, because it is really good. Yes, the focus of it is a pandemic ruining the world. Shen […]

A Steamy Novella that Also Made Me Hungry

Tikka Chance on Me by Suleikha Snyder

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The Pandemic has stolen my ability to focus on long form works, so I went trolling through my digital library to see what I had available in the novella length, thankfully for me at some point I had downloaded Suleikha Snyder’s Tikka Chance on Me. Perfect. I *loved* the first part of this novella. Pinky Grover is a fantastic lead – she’s a feisty, sex-positive Desi heroine that could carry a much larger work on her character’s shoulders. Snyder introduces us via Pinky to Trucker […]

Didn’t land the dismount (CBR12Bingo 2: Pandemic)

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

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No one remakes bad movies. We get a hundred Jurassic World movies like the first one wasn’t flipping perfect, but the movies with promising premises that fail in the execution remain in the dustbin of history. I want someone to remake this book. The premise is strong and intriguing – there’s a virus of some kind that renders speech impossible to listen to. At first it’s just the voices of children that become toxic to adults, but it progresses and soon any speech renders the […]

I took the title of this Bingo square literally

The 1918 Flu Pandemic by Katherine Krohn, illustrated by Bob Hall, Keith Williams, and Charles Barnett III

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Well, this is timely.  This juvenile graphic novel came out in 2008, and I’m sure the author and illustrators never thought they would have to live through a pandemic themselves.    This is meant for kids around 4th grade, and tries to explain what happened during the pandemic.  It focuses on the speed and deadliness of the virus, but also on the uncertainty.  Some of the things that they did will definitely be familiar with kids today, especially the closing of schools and the use […]

The best #Pandemic read I could ask for

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

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Bingo Square: Pandemic This pandemic period, I did a great thing for my happiness: I read Gideon the Ninth. I’m going to eschew a plot description/blurb here and just say what everyone else has been saying: lesbian necromancers in space. Need a little more? Fine. Gideon is not a necromancer (but she is into girls). She hits things with swords so she’s recruited (unwillingly) to go to a big possibly haunted space castle/research facility with her worst enemy, her planet’s only surviving necromancer (who is into bones). […]



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