Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Shorts

Cape Fear by John D Macdonald

In the Suicide Mountains by John Gardner

More Better Deals by Joe R Lansdale

by Leave a Comment

Cape Fear – Oddly I first read this novel in like 7th grade and clearly don’t remember much from it. I also watched both movie versions about the same time and so my sense of what happens in the story is as much affected by those as this. This novel is much more straight forward in some ways and weird and digressive in others. The plot here is that Sam Bowden is a married man with two kids. He’s a successful lawyer, and is a […]

The Collected Stories of Philip K Dick – Volume 1

Volume 1: The King of the Elves by Philip K Dick

by Leave a Comment

I have an affection for even the goofiest of the old science fiction stories. That doesn’t mean they’re always good if I have an affection for them, and calling them goofy also doesn’t mean they’re bad. In this first volume of the collected stories of Philip K Dick, we have a selection of many of his early stories, including a few that are often presented together as “Early Stories” like “The Gun”, “The Defenders”, and “The Skull”, the last of which is great. Other stories […]

Short story review dump (Part V)

The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick

The Hanging Stranger by Philip K. Dick

Human Is? by Philip K. Dick

A Kiss With Teeth by Max Gladstone

Let Those Who Would by Genevieve Valentine

Mirror by Haruki Murakami

Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson

Blood Son by Richard Matheson

by Leave a Comment

This is something new I’m trying this year, where I review short stories as stand alone stories, not part of anthologies or collections. Here are parts I, II, III, and IV. The Eyes Have It by Philip K Dick (3 stars) This is, so I’ve read, the shortest story in Philip K. Dick’s bibliography. And the copyright doesn’t appear to have ever been renewed, so it can easily be found online. Here it is at Project Guttenberg. It tells the story of a man reading […]

Short story review dump (Part I)

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Barn Burning by Haruki Murakami

Mastiff by Joyce Carol Oates

A Village After Dark by Kazuo Ishiguro

King of the Elves by Philip K Dick

The Second Bakery Attack by Haruki Murakami

by 2 Comments

So I was nerding out a couple weeks ago, and started another database. This time, I wanted to compile a list of all the stories written by as many well-regarded authors as I could think of. It started off with just novels, but quickly grew to include short stories. Which means the database got out of control pretty quickly. I knew that many (most?) authors publish a lot of short stories – but when you actually see them all lined up….. It made me realize […]

The Subinfo Computers owned by Lies, Incorporated had been caught in an unnatural act by a service mechanic.

Lies Inc by Philip K Dick

by Leave a Comment

This one was pretty rough going and it took me a bit of time to figure out why it was. Some chunk of my listening was spent going, wait, why don’t I like this very much. I was compelling to complete it by my completionist tendencies (a theme today, by the way) because it had been sitting in my Audible library for like six years after I bought it for $2 years ago. So the novel is about a future in which corporations control space […]

Not a Single Dick-pun in this review. Not. A. Single. One.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

by 1 Comment

Okay, so let’s disregard the awful title of this book and instead pretend the title reflects the content. In that case the title would be incisive, something about religion, humanity, and empathy. It would not be an awful pun. I hate puns and there will be no puns in this review. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in a future after a devastating world war. Most of Earth’s population has emigrated to a colony on Mars, yet some people remain behind for reasons […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo