Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About fiordeligi

CBR18 Participant

I'm a 45-year old New Yorker. I enjoy historical fiction, fantasy, humor, and science writing. I'm usually too depressed these days for true crime or grimdark angst, but I'll read anything if it's got an interesting enough setting.

fiordeligi's Reviews:

Be Gay Do Crime

Be Gay Do Crime: Sixteen Stories of Queer Chaos by Molly Llewellyn (editor), Kristel Buckley (editor)

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Once again, I’m a sucker for a good title, and Be Gay Do Crime got me immediately. It’s a short story collection edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley, and I went in assuming that it’d be a series of riots. The name evokes the proud history of queer militancy to me — the anti-normative ethos of “not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you.” That’s mostly not it. Across the 16 stories collected here, there are many flavors of queerness (largely […]

Somewhat Lovable Schlub Breaks the Universe

Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World by Mark Waddell

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I was really committed to embracing Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World. I generally like dark slapstick and horror comedy; I enjoyed Someone You Can Build a Nest In (from the POV of a sentient ooze that eats most of its in-laws) and Dreadful (from the POV of an evil warlock who wakes up one day with amnesia and a conscience). So, when I found this queer romance centering a guy who raises an Abomination to eat the world in exchange for a promotion […]

Please inhale, Ted Chiang

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

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In both Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” and its cinematic adaptation, the 2016 film Arrival, the protagonist’s story appears out of order. You read (or watch) the narrative as though you are seeing someone put together an intricate puzzle, and it’s not until one critical piece of knowledge— the central conceit of the story — slots into place that you can understand the correct order of events, backwards and forwards. Reading “Story of Your Life” on its own, I loved it. So, I sought […]

Queer Abundance in a Time of Scarcity

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

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As soon as I saw the title “Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature” (by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian), I knew I wanted to read this book. It’s been all over the 2025 “best of” lists, from Time to Vanity Fair to Vulture, and it’s easy to see why this one is resonating so intensely given what the last year has meant to LGBTQ+ folks. The queer expansiveness and community-building of Kaishian’s book is an effective emotional antidote to all the anti-trans scare tactics and fake […]



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