Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The opposite of dark academia might be cozy

The English Experience by Julie Schumacher

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The English Experience is parody and gentle satire of a college professor and college work that also fits the cozy genre is almost fantasy, but not the D&D type. It’s the kind of thing most people who have not worked in academia probably think (erroneously, hence the fantasy) being a professor is like. Who wouldn’t want to lead study abroad, free trip, right? Wrong, mostly for reasons the story takes up in some way. Rather like its two predecessors, The English Experience is mostly only […]

I want to see this Bond movie

Kiss the Girls and Make Them Spy: An original Jane Bond Parody by Mabel Maney

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Cbr15bingo sex This book was published in 2001 and somehow I only just heard about it a few weeks ago. It is a hoot, with the kind of silly-named characters and wacky mix-ups that you might find in a Jeeves and Wooster novel. American writer Mabel Maney gives us the story of Jane Bond, the lesbian sister of James, who drinks and sleeps around like her brother but who lives in a run-down bedsit and works at a bookstore in 1965 London. Jane is dealing […]

“You want to know if they’re the mittens I wore to Biden’s inauguration. That’s all anyone wants to talk about these days: mittens, mittens, mittens.”

Feel the Bern by Andrew Shaffer

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CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books from different countries #1 When Crash, a new intern working for Bernie Sanders, accompanies her boss up to a small-town festival in Vermont, the last thing she expects is to discover a dead body – or that Bernie will insist on trying to solve the mystery. A few years ago I read Hope Never Dies, a comic mystery where Obama and Biden team up in the post-2016 election season to uncover the truth behind an Amtrak conductor’s death. Now Shaffer has […]

Not as funny as it thinks it is, but not terrible, either.

Kill the Farm Boy (The Tales of Pell, #1) by Kevin Hearne & Delilah S. Dawson

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I was hoping to like this a lot more than I did. And because I’m probably going to Review Amnesty the third book in this series, which I read in November for a book club meeting I didn’t end up attending, this review will also touch on that one a little and the series as a whole. Which is not as funny as it thinks it is. I like the idea of taking traditional fantasy tropes and structuring a book so as to poke fun […]

A must read for anyone who doesn’t want their cat’s soul poisoned by the liberal media

How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety by Zachary Auburn

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Reading How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety is a lot like reading an article in the Onion. You get a few chuckles out of the content, but the biggest joke is the headline. Of course, How to Talk to Your Cat About Gun Safety also includes photos of cats being cute and doing ridiculous things like cleaning their rifle or wearing a sombrero, so that’s a big plus! I’m sure the astute readers of this site will realize right away that this […]

“Cinema helps us to remember that although we all have the right to shine, some of us must shine in the background, out of focus, and not too brightly.”

Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade

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Finally, a book about the greatest film of our generation! What film, you may ask? What film does Richard Ayoade venerate, dissect, cling to, and live for? Richard Ayoade; the author of several books on film, director and writer of several films, host of a delightful travel show, and beloved cast member/co-creator of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (and many other things) has written an entire book about the forgettable 2003 Gwenyth Paltrow rom-com View From the Top. Yes, View From the Top; the movie where Mike Myers […]



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