Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I Have Always Imagined that Paradise Will Be a Kind of Library

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

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Have you ever felt that a book was written just for you? Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is my Platonic ideal: a novel by an Elder Millennial, set in an alternate San Francisco Bay Area populated by talented, curious people, weird-but-plausible technologies, and endless shelves of books. By the time I discovered the in-story trilogy of fantasy novels and the credible centuries-old secret society, I committed to becoming a Sloan completist. Our initially hapless first-person hero Clay Jannon is looking for a job, any job. His […]

Union Man, Private Eye

October Heat by Gordon De Marco

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As I’ve said multiple times on this here website (and other places): the concept of a lefty-leaning private eye is not all that radical (no pun intended). Chandler, Hammett, and Macdonald, often considered the trinity of male PI literature that birthed the modern Lone Detective mystery tale for America, were all sympathetic to working class folks and skeptical of the rich and those who protected them. Books cannot escape their context: look at Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole, whose early-90s novels carry the spirit of the […]

How to Party with an Infant by Kaui Hart Hemmings

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Something about this book just did not connect, and I’m really torn about whether it’s me or the author who’s the issue. Mele Hart is a single mom in San Francisco whose boyfriend/baby’s father turned out to be already engaged (this isn’t a spoiler, it’s on the blurb). She’s part of a playgroup with a few other moms and one dad. People get assigned to small groups (is this a thing? The closest thing I’ve heard of is MOPS) by a larger organization, which also […]

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's CBR11 Review No:5 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: , , , , ·

Love in an elevator

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The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory was simply lovely. Alexa and Drew meet when stuck in a hotel elevator together in San Francisco. Alexa is on her way to meet her sister to celebrate a promotion. Drew is begrudgingly going to his ex-girlfriend’s wedding. The two strangers hit it off immediately, so Drew takes a chance and invites Alexa to the wedding. He gets a bit carried away and tells everyone she’s his girlfriend. Luckily, Alexa doesn’t mind and they have an amazing time at the wedding and […]

A reluctant superheroine

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Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn was fantastic! This is the first novel in a new series about Evie Tanaka, personal assistant and best friend to San Francisco’s number #1 superheroine, Aveda Jupiter. They have been BFFs since they were kids when Aveda was only Annie Chang. They were obsessed with a Michelle Yeoh action flick, “The Heroic Trio”, where martial arts heroes battled The Evil Master. It inspired Aveda to become a hero in real life even before a demonic portal opened up in the […]

Do not read if you are not doing carbs right now

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I’ve never been to California in my life. I’ve never even been to the West Coast. I kind of have this image in my head that everybody is either Guy Fieri or Mark Zuckerberg with surfboards in cosplay, which intellectually I know isn’t accurate, but I still have a hard time picturing the San Francisco area otherwise. Similarly, the corporate pieces of the story totally matches with the general idea of what your typical tech San Francisco start-up must be like ( I say that […]



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