Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Two Completely Unrelated Books

Death to Anyone Who Reads This by Hugh Howey and Elinor Taylor

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen

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cbr17bingo – free (replacing Arts) Death to Anyone Who Reads This  So almost immediately after I said I wasn’t likely to read this short (100-page) sequel to The Balloon Hunter, I went ahead and read it. I’m not sure what had made me think it would be more of a horror novel than the first one. It isn’t really, although there is some more violence in this once. Similar to The Balloon Hunter, this one is a “found novel,” but this time through journal entries instead of postcards. […]

A Quiet Book About Surviving Alone

The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

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On the surface, this translated, dystopian work from 1963 doesn’t seem like it should be as engaging as it is. It’s slow-paced, introspective, and all about a woman milking a cow, scything hay, chopping wood, describing the weather, and spending time with animals. Nothing really happens. But I was so interested. The book does start with a big event, though. Our nameless narrator wakes up to find that her traveling companions who had gone out the previous night had never returned. When she heads to […]

Entertained, But Left Wanting

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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I wanted to like this more than I did. And I did enjoy it, but I was expecting more after having read Sea of Tranquility and seeing how much other Cannonballers like this one. Station Eleven alternates settings between when a flu pandemic starts and 20 years later in the post-apocalyptic world. In the future, Kirsten, one of the main characters, is an actor in The Traveling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians who travel from small town to small town to perform for […]

It’s all over and I’m standin’ pretty

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  I enjoy post apocalypse fiction. There is something about the society and all its excesses breaking down and mankind being stripped to its bare essentials that appeals to me as a literary trope. The means in which the world ends is simply a MacGuffin, the device that propels the story forward and tells us what happens to mankind when it has to focus solely on survival. The Passage is similar in that regard, though the concept of a viral vampire apocalypse is intriguing. In […]

Walk the Tarnished World

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I think what I loved best about this book were its nooks and crannies.  This is a book obsessed with tiny detail.  Instead of feeling overwhelming or tedious, these details make the world seem lived-in and solid.   For all the detail, however, the book still manages to feel dreamy and atmospheric.  I wanted to wander with the Wandering Symphony for 300 more pages. Read the rest at Pop Culture Penalty Box.



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