Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Strong Collection of Horror Stories

The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories: Volume One by Edited by James D. Jenkins & Ryan Cagle

by Leave a Comment

Another of my Christmas Valancourt books! I was honestly impressed by this collection. It has a consistently high quality of stories and there weren’t any that I thought were especially weak. I also liked that it was a mix of Victorian and more modern stories, which felt like a good back and forth in terms of writing style. There were some legitimately scary stories in here. After slogging through so many indifferent SF/F collections from the 1960s and 1970s over the past few years, this […]

Three Horror Short Story Collections

The Shores of Space by Richard Matheson

Everything's Eventual by Stephen King

Night Shift by Stephen King

by 2 Comments

CBR15Bingo: Violence (plenty of violence here!) It’s interesting going back and doing these reviews a while after I read the books because I get to see what sticks around in my mind and what doesn’t. Say what you will about Stephen King, but his stories stay with you. There’s something about his ability to get across a strong visual image and have it embed itself in your brain forever. He really taps into something very primal with his writing, especially his earlier work. I am […]

“Reality is thin but not always dark:” A Very Enjoyable and Thought Provoking Collection from King

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

by Leave a Comment

I was struck late last year with the overwhelming urge to read some Stephen King short stories, and so here is the result. I hadn’t read this collection for a few years so was able to re-read these with a sense of meeting old friends who I slightly remembered. This collection has a high overall level of stories, and I was struck by the strength of his writing and the way he worded things throughout, often very beautifully and strikingly. I will say that having […]

The most surreal collection I have ever read

Gods of Want: Stories by K-Ming Chang

by 1 Comment

I picked up this book for a couple of reasons. One, I really enjoy short story collections. Two, I read a short blurb about this book about that described it as spanning the space between magical realism and fantasy which totally piqued my interest. It was available as an audiobook from my local library, so I checked it out. Typically when I read a collection of short stories, I like to review the collection as a whole as well as give a brief review of […]

Another Indifferent Science Fiction Collection from the 60s.

The Year's Best S-F: 10th Annual Edition by Edited by Judith Merril

by Leave a Comment

At this point I’m starting to question my decision to work through these 60s/70s SF/F collections, but I continue on because each of them does have a few notable stories, and I am interested in the history and foundation of the field. I think what I got the most out of this one was seeing famous authors breaking onto the scene and the background information on magazines Merril was pulling from, as well as her opinions on current events and the state of SF/F in […]

A wonderful SF/F anthology for young adults (and really anyone!)

Firebirds by Edited by Sharyn November

by Leave a Comment

In retrospect so many of the books I loved from a young reader until today were published under the Firebird imprint, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been contemporaneous with what were clearly great years for their publishing program. Just looking at the list of books that takes up the first two pages here — Lloyd Alexander, Nancy Farmer, Sylvia Engdahl, Brian Jacques, Robin McKinley,  Tanith Lee, etc — and then considering the additional star power of this anthology — Charles Vess, Garth Nix, […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo