Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Allegory of power

Pigeons!: A Fable For Our Times by Marc Chalvin

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If I have one complaint about Pigeons!: A Fable For Our Times by Marc Chalvin (due December 2025, read via an oline reader) is that the people who need to read this book, won’t. This is the commentary about what is happening today. It comes out and tells us how the Dictator will use anything he can to stay in power. It comes out and tells us there are well meaning people, but they are missing a few pieces of the puzzle. And those who […]

Not Quite What I Was Expecting

Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen

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I’m not quite sure what to make of this one. It seems like it’s supposed to satirize reality TV, particularly The Bachelor type shows. In this case, the show is called The Catch, and we’re down to the final 4 contestants competing for a scummy D-lister. I think my problem is that the book didn’t go far enough with the satire. The characters read as one-note instead of the exaggerated characters they could have been or perhaps were supposed to be. The exception was Renee, who was a […]

Wakey wakey!

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

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Oh, I love this! Die Zeit recently included this in a “Best of the 21st Century So Far” list. Since I had an unsuccessful odyssey trying to order Lapvona earlier this year and loved Moshfegh’s introduction to this short story collection, I had to buy it. I swear that’s the reason — I’m not creepily copying Zirza’s reading list, this just keeps happening! Anyway, our young, hot, skinny and rich protagonist decides to spend a year sleeping to recalibrate her body and life, as she […]

Yes, There Are No Scripts. So It Is Written in the Script

Ghost Cities by Siang Lu

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Siang Lu’s Ghost Cities is the winner of this year’s Miles Franklin Award, which is Australia’s most prestigious literary award. It had also been sitting on my reader long before it got nominated. Reading about Lu’s win was the kick in the pants I needed to pick the book up and give it read through. And I’m really quite ashamed that I hadn’t done it sooner.  Ghost Cities is an imaginative and bonkers novel weaving together two tangentially related plots. The first unfolds in a […]

Probably a great satire, what do I know. CBRBINGO – Purple

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis

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I’m sad I didn’t like this one very much. It was much less fun and funny than I was hoping it would be, with that premise. (That premise: a young couple’s five year old daughter is bitten by a werewolf and then becomes a werewolf herself, upon which they discover there is a secret magical world among the mundane one. Then there is a PTA, but at a mAgiC sChOoL.) Where I wish this had been more lighthearted and focused on the school and magic […]

Not Without My Dice.

A Conventional Boy by Charles Stross

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I’ve been a fan of Charlie Stross’ Laundry Files for over a decade now. This has given me plenty of time to watch the series evolve. Like many other works that began as satire aimed at government bureaucracy, it has grown increasingly cynical as real life has become harder and harder to parody.  In particular, there was a rough trilogy linked to the original Laundry Files stories under the title of Tales of the New Management that hit me as painfully cynical, to the point that it […]



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