Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Heroes hate wasting time. ‘You’re wasting my time,’ they’ll say. Yet they devote very little time to time management, and rarely consult a diary.”

The Grip of Film by Richard Ayoade

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Another Ayoade book! So exciting! Except….wait. This is barely Ayoade. Yes, he wrote it, and yes, he does some narration- “some” being the key word in this situation. The Grip of Film is a fake book written by a fake person (written by Ayoade, naturally). The fake person is Gordy LaSure; a longtime Hollywood vagrant and alleged screenwriter. Gordy is a (purposefully) contemptible character; he has the bravado of The Kids Stays in the Picture with a fraction of the success and (at least) four times the casual […]

“Morituri Nolumus Mori … Er, roughly speaking, it means, ‘We who are about to die don’t want to.’”

The Last Hero (Discworld, #27) by Terry Pratchett

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It’s been a while since I’ve visited the Discworld. I usually try to read two or three a year, but I only managed to read one in 2019. Plus I had to track down a copy of this since my library didn’t have it, and then I never got around to reading it over the summer like I was supposed to. As always, should have read it sooner. This book tickled me. This is actually considered the 27th full book of the series, despite it […]

“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 […]

Murder Your Darlings

Bunny by Mona Awad

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This one was recommended to me by a friend of mine and I’m glad I gave it a shot. While it’s not my normal thing, Mona Awad’s prose is crisp and she tells a good story. The whole thing is a horror/satire work on the nature of grad school work and the feeling of belonging or not belonging to a particular clique. I think the horror bits work better than the satire ones. When Awad shifts into situations of hyperrealism and dream states, she describes […]

“I take fifty milligrams of amitriptyline every night, and then an extra ten milligrams of Ambien if I really want to sleep through the night. Sometimes I add a Lunesta, and if that doesn’t work, I get out the Valium—”

Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians, #1) by Kevin Kwan

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I had fun with this and I will be reading the sequels, but for me this is one of the few cases where the movie did it better. I saw the movie first, which I try not to do for the most part, but I’m honestly glad I did it that way. The actors really brought a lot of dimension to their characters that was lacking in the book, and the movie also had a much more clear arc than the book, which doesn’t focus […]

Choose your own romance. This book is basically one long genre in-joke.

My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel by Kitty Curran & Larissa Zageris

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This book was a gift from my friend Jessy for my last birthday, and it was really fun! I’m glad she gave it to me, because I don’t know if I’d have ever gotten around to it on my own. For all you CBR romance addicts, this is definitely a fun book to check out, because it’s obviously written by two women who love and know the genre very well. Going in, I was expecting a straight romance that you could take different paths through, […]



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