Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I was happy, but I also wasn’t. Something was missing, here. Or not missing, but sleeping. But nothing here could wake it up. It made me feel alone. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

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Well I didn’t finish this in time for book club (it was my pick 😂 ) but I did finish it! And it was excellent. [two and a half months later] Okay, so, I am largely incapable of writing reviews in 2024 it seems, but I wanted to say things about this! Firstly, I am going to lower this down to four stars because in the past two months, it really hasn’t stuck with me as much as I thought it would, the way that […]

How blah can you be without hitting boring? Read on to find out.

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

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The tournament arc is one of my least favorite tropes in any kind of action driven story, be it fantasy or science fiction, in any medium not limited to but including manga, anime, cartoon, comic book, novel, series or stand alone. It always feels like filler, light on character or plot or much of anything, just a random series of conflicts that build up to the main one in which the world/universe/whatever as we know it is at stake. None of that is quite true […]

The Nazi Handmaid’s Tale

Widowland by C.J. Carey

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In a 1953 England under the control of German forces, life is good for Rose Ransom, a member of the privileged Geli class – or at least as good as life can be for a woman in the oppressive regime. But when she is given the task of infiltrating Widowland in search of possible subversives, she comes to learn she might have more power than she always thought. The premise of this book caught my eye immediately. I haven’t really read alternate history books before, […]

A Very Solid SF Short Story Collection

The 1976 Annual World's Best SF by Donald A. Wollheim (Editor)

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I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the stories chosen for this collection. As I work through the SFF paperbacks I’ve inherited from my parents, I often end up slogging through some very boring or irritating stories from this era, which was a rough one for the field in my opinion. The New Wave and I do not mix. It could be that by 1976 it was on its way out and that’s why I liked these stories better. You can actually tell what’s […]

The Journey is the Point

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

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Apparently you either love Becky Chambers’ style of writing or you hate it. I am firmly on the side of loving a feel-good sci-fi novel, and here are my favorite things about The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet: 1. The world-building. I love how each chapter you learn more about the galaxy, how the Galactic Commons works, the histories of the different alien species. The news blasts at the start of some chapters are a fun way to learn more about what is […]

The Autobiography of a Narcissistic Psychopath

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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Coriolanus Snow’s only way to rebuild his family’s legacy is to have his tribute make a good showing in the 10th Hunger Games. But when he starts to become interested in Lucy Gray, he wonders if it might be possible for her to actually win them. I put off reading this book for a long time, scared off by mixed reviews from other fans of the Hunger Games series. It’s certainly a different type of story, but I ended up appreciating this new perspective into […]



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