Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“In the clear and steady gleam of electric lights, superstition turns to foolishness; in the crucible of the combustion engine, false beliefs are burned away.” (Bingos #9 & 10)

Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite by Zoraida Cordova & Natalie Parker (editors)

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My Halloween read this year is this collection of new vampire tales edited by the team of Zoraida Cordova and Natalie Parker. I enjoy vampire stores because they offer so many different views onto the human condition, if you go looking for them. In Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite Cordova and Parker, along with the assembled authors, take the time to dig in and explore these angles – with postscripts by Cordova and Parker after each story. Let’s handle individual stories in […]

Melancholy and Malevolent Creatures

Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender

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I read a review of this book somewhere on the internet, a long time ago.  Maybe on Pajiba, maybe on Cannonball read, I don’t really remember.  But I did write the title and the author down in my little notebook, along with the dozens (maybe hundreds) of other books I plan on reading,  and movies and TV shows that I plan on seeing.  This year, before the world changed forever, a few friends came over to hang out and one of them brought the book […]

Video Games and the “Real World”

Press Start to Play by Daniel H. Wilson, John Joseph Adams, Ernest Cline

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Bingo Review 2: Shelfie I honestly have no idea how long Press Start to Play has been on my literal TBR shelf, but it’s been a while. I figured this was as good a reason as any to finally pick it up, especially since I actually broke down and bought a Nintendo Switch Light a few weeks ago. I’ve never been much of a gamer; I didn’t grow up with it really, unless you count the educational stuff like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers. I […]

The Big Short

If It Bleeds by Stephen King

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If It Bleeds is ostensibly a new collection of short stories by the master storyteller, Stephen King. But it didn’t read like a collection of short stories to me, as King deftly compacted the richness of a novel into each short tale. He confidently weaves whole worlds together between each page. The first story, Mr Harrigan’s Phone, tells a story of a small-town teenager who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a reclusive retired billionaire. Mr Harrigan introduces teenager Craig to the world of Hemingway, […]

Breathing in a collection of sci-fi short stories by a master

Exhalation: Stories by Ted Chiang

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Exhalation: Stories is a collection of short sci-fi stories written by Ted Chiang. Below is a short review of each story but over-all, Exhalation: Stories made me think. Collectively, each story forced upon a small crisis of identity in how I relate to technology in my own world, and I am a more self-aware person for it. Chiang created a collection of stories that all meshes together. No story feels out of place or like an intruder. “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate”: An interesting and […]

Have you lost your mind? Experienced religion? Or any other dreadful thing?

Louisa May Alcott's Christmas Treasury by Louisa May Alcott

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I love Christmas. As my kid says, there are more holiday songs on my “Holly Jolly” play list than there are days in the year. I bake an insane number of cookies and start watching Christmas movies in November. Yep, I am one of those people and I’m not sorry about it. When I was around 9, I got a paperback anthology of Christmas stories. To keep myself occupied until everyone else woke up on Christmas morning (I was the only kid in the house at the […]



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