Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“My suffering was washed away along with my tears. But somewhere mother’s tears remain in stasis, jelled.”

A Drunken Dream and Other Stories by Moto Hagio

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This is a very nicely packaged hardcover collection of manga short stories by Moto Hagio. The stories are varied but they have strong emotional themes connecting them, mainly dealing with feelings of lonliness/isolation, societal pressures, and tragedy/grief. Hagio’s beautiful art wonderfully coveys the emotions of the characters and the plots. Her art is delicate and finely detailed. The stories are uniformly very strong. My favorites are “Angel Mimic,” “Iguana Girl,” and “The Child Who Comes Home.” “Angel Mimic” deals very deftly with themes of suicide, […]

“I have been activated, therefore I have a purpose, the bot thought. I have a purpose, therefore I serve.”

The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer

Bots of the Lost Ark by Suzanne Palmer

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In catching up on reading end of CBR14 reviews I clocked narfna’s review of Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 132 since she titled it “Attention: Murderbot stans: I have a short story for you.” Consider my attention grabbed. I love Murderbot very much and anything that gives similar feels is something I want to at least peruse, and narfna so helpfully provided links to both The Secret Lives of Bots and Bots of the Lost Ark (and if you click those titles – so have I!). Suzanne […]

Charming start to CBR15

Snowdrift and Other Stories by Georgette Heyer

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I found this collection thanks to one of the many articles that pop up in my social media recommending various types of book to me. I can’t remember what the list was (I think it was some sort of recommendations from the New York Public Library), but given last month’s arrival of snowstorm Elliot plus the overwhelming amount of holiday stuff I had to do, a collection of short stories set in the Regency period seemed like a fun diversion. And it absolutely was! If […]

Attention, Murderbot stans: I have a short story for you.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 132 by ed. Neil Clarke

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I downloaded this in 2021 for the Read Harder Challenge but never read it, and no longer remember the challenge I downloaded it for, but I managed to make it fit perfectly into this year’s Read Harder. Efficiency! The issue itself after all of that was a bit of disappointment. I’m noting here at the top that the five-star rating is solely for “The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer, a 8,000~ word novelette that won the Hugo in 2018, a win that is […]

“News always reached Miss Marple, one way or another.”

Marple: Twelve New Stories by Various

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I would read more of these Agatha Christie short story collections featuring notable authors, for sure. Even the ones where Americans tried and failed to capture that British Marple feeling were entertaining in their failure. But most of these stories were pretty successful! One nailed it completely. Highlights for me were the stories from Ruth Ware (I know!), Naomi Alderman, Elly Griffiths, Kate Mosse, and Leigh Bardugo. This may be the easy way out, but I’ve just copied and pasted my Goodreads status update mini-reviews […]

A Great Collection of Short Horror Stories

Full Throttle by Joe Hill

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Any book I buy twice is a good one, and Full Throttle lived up to my recollections as fast-paced, fun reading. This book collects of a bunch of Joe Hill’s short stories, and it’s a great representation of his work. Two stories in here are co-written with his father, but the bulk of the collection is Hill’s work alone, and he really knows how to write. Someone once said that Hill writes better King than King does, which is debatable, but I tore through this […]



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