Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Last Defender of Camelot – one of Zelazny’s best

Last Defender of Camelot by Roger Zelazny

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After finishing a book I really hated, I needed to cleanse my palate, so to speak. The song Guinevere from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young came on and I realized it had been a while since I had re-read The Last Defender of Camelot. It does not disappoint. Is the style a bit dated? Sure. Are there some problematic passages in “Damnation Alley”? Without question, especially the Nazi ones and the handling of female characters in that story (one reason why this received 4 stars […]

April 2023 Leftovers

Lady Boss by Jackie Collins

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Flux by Jinwoo Choo

The Cutie by Donald Westlake

The Boy with the Faster Brain by Peter Shankman

The Widening Gyre by Robert B. Parker

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Happy spring! Lady Boss** So after two books and almost 2k pages of enough internalized misogyny to make Phyllis Schlafly blush, with stories chock full of men and women who will literally hump anyone and anything, Jackie Collins suddenly decides to make Lucky purchase a movie studio…in order to get rid of casting couches and male dominance in favor of female-driven movies that are less horny. What? Whatever. I’ll still keep reading this garbage. The Hunting Party*** I was prepared to write about this being […]

Taking the easy joke here, this book made me want to die inside.

Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg

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I had a hard time deciding between one and two star rating for Dying Inside, as it was well written and the literary voice was engaging. But I found this to be vile. A sexist, racist, masturbatory exploration of a really cool concept. Dude took the laziest option and tried to be profound with it. Ick. Thanks a lot, TBR Jar! Anyway, as you can see, I ended up at 1.5 stars rounded up, because I am willing to extend some leeway for all the positive […]

Finally Joining the Murderbot Party

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls by Jane Lindskold

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[CW for underage sex work in the 2nd book review] I finally decided to get All Systems Red from the library and have the next two on hold. I enjoyed it and think it pretty much lived up to the hype. Murderbot is a SecUnit on an uninhabited planet. It’s assigned to a group of scientists who are exploring the planet, but it doesn’t particularly enjoy its job. It hacked its governor module and spends as much time as it can streaming various entertainment media, […]

Math problems on Mars.

Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier

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I said in a status update while reading Singer Distance that it was giving me Contact vibes, and that’s true. The homespun science and grungy academic feel of the book, along with a group of characters working towards contacting aliens does give me the same feelings I get watching that movie (I have the book and I really need to finally read it!), but Singer Distance also has its own unique feel. This is an alternate history where back in the late 1800s, scientists spotted a message on Mars and began […]

It is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it.

A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers

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I had heard so many good things about this book that I decided to put a hold on it at my library back at the beginning of Bingo 2022. Like the characters in the novel, this book must have been on a journey, because I never heard from my library, and after Bingo, I forgot about it. In February 2023, a voice mail saying my hold book was ready for pick up left me slightly perplexed. Upon retrieving it, I found A Psalm for the […]



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