Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“The things that could have happened but did not are just as crucial to a life as all the things that do.”

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker

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This is the second book by Karen Thompson Walker (the first being The Age of Miracles), whereupon finishing the book, I was unsure how I felt and needed to sit with the story for a while. With TAOM, there was a lot to like — interesting premise, selfish tween narrator, fascinating vignettes of the day to day life that we take advantage of — but I always felt that maybe the book was a bit too much like “literary fiction” to be believed as the […]

“…as if he knew even then that there existed under everything a universal grief”

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I suppose that The Age of Miracles can be viewed as a dystopian novel. In it our narrator, Julia, tells us about the year she turned 12 and the Earth’s turning slowed down, eventually leading to weeks of daylight and weeks of darkness. It can also be said that this is a sad book, about the dying and destruction of our world. These things are true, but somehow Karen Thompson Walker prevents the novel from being as unbearably sad as the description might have you […]

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

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 What would happen if the rotation of the earth slowed?  Beyond the  physical effects on the earth, what changes would occur socially?  How would a young person moving into their teen years deal with both the transition to adulthood and a crumbling society trying to stay afloat?  This book came highly recommended but ultimately left me a little cold.   I thought it fell short of its full potential.  The science fiction geek inside wanted a little more meat to conflict set up regarding earth’s […]



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