Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn’t, he sent men to come and take it away.”

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

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The Night Watch of the sprawling city of Ankh-Morpork consists of only three people (although people might question if Nobby Nobbs is entirely human) led by the depressed and shambolic Captain Samuel Vimes. No one is more surprised than he when he finds out that they have a new recruit from the mountains who actually volunteed for the Watch. No one ever does that. The fact that young Carrot Ironfunderson claims to be a dwarf, even though he’s 6 foot 2 and seems to keep […]

What are you hiding underneath that skin suit?

The Cockroach by Ian McEwan

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Ian McEwan has his hits and misses, but by gum, everything he writes is memorable. It’s interesting to see him return to short fiction, since that’s where his career started. I don’t remember all the stories from , but I DO remember opening my mouth in shock a few times. He didn’t earn the nickname “Ian Macabre” for nothing. And with The Cockroach, we DEFINITELY get some wild and memorable moments. If you read Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and thought “This, but in reverse,” you’ll be […]

Racism but with Rabbits

The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde

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The same way there are authors who are not for me, there are authors which are. Jasper Fforde is one of them. Authors in the former camp tend to have books that which I’d consider 4* which end up getting pushed down to 3* for me, while with Fforde I feel like the opposite is true. Which is not to say this is a 3* book that I have pushed up to 4*, just that I feel like there’s a bit of leeway he would […]

“The Spontaneous Anthropomorphic Event had taken place before I was born, so rabbits talking, wearing summer dresses or driving cars never seemed that unusual to me.”

The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde

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Say one thing for Jasper Fforde, he does what he wants. This is a quintessential 3.5 star book for me, but I was all set and ready to round this up to four stars until the ending happened and totally threw me for a loop. It’s not that I thought the ending was bad, more that I wasn’t expecting it and didn’t quite know how to process it. I may very well come back at some later date and round this up to four stars […]

Jasper Fforde has written a world librarians are basically superheroes.

The Woman Who Died a Lot (Thursday Next, #7) by Jasper Fforde

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This wasn’t supposed to be the last book in the Thursday Next series, but it works as a good finale anyway. (Someday we might get Dark Reading Matter? Who knows what Fforde will do next.) I liked this much better than the last one in this series. Actually, I think it’s my favorite in quite some time (not really sure, though, since it’s been so long since I’ve read one through five). I was very relieved at the small presence of the Bookworld. I much […]

Not sure what to make of this one

Sadness by Donald Barthelme

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A friend of mine lent me this book (in fact, was rather insistent that I read it), saying it helped define who he is today. Normally, I enjoy reading books that give me insight into what makes the people I know tick, but in this case, I read this collection of short stories, and I’m no closer to any such wisdom. Goodreads describes this collection as “masterpieces of wit, whimsy, and satire.” I enjoy a good satire, understanding that such writing isn’t intended to be […]



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