Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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About GentleRain

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Your jack of all trades eccentric. Knows a little about a lot and a lot about a little. Tends to mainly read non-fiction (history, true crime, old gossip, etc), SF/F, horror, graphic novels, "genre" books.

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“Life is priceless…but life has a cost:” A Look at the Vietnam War Through the Eyes of One Family

Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63 by Marcelino Truong

Saigon Calling: London 1963-75 by Marcelino Truong

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I’d been eyeing this series for several years and finally asked for them for atheist Christmas (the present-focused non-religious version my parents decided to bequeath us). I enjoyed these and they’re definitely worth reading, but they were more removed and distant feeling than I thought they’d be. The first volume follows Truong’s family as they move to South Vietnam for his father to become Prime Minister Diem’s translator. His French mother buckles under the strain of living in the midst of an escalating war, and […]

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

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

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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 […]

“Can’t you understand that, when you have to be careful all the time, it’s dreadful to see things like that being accepted? They’re not even alive.” Pratchett’s Look at Oppression and Personhood

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

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I’m a Discworld fan but have never done a complete read of all the books, and so my experience has been a bit chaotic in reading these. I picked this up on a trip randomly and just got around to it a few months later, so another entry in my piecemeal approach to Pratchett’s work. Often times my big grand plans like that end up coming face to face with reality (and the monetary cost of buying 40 books), but sometimes the slow and steady […]

“How does a government steal a child and then imprison him? How does it keep it a secret? This is how.”

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A very good and heartbreaking book to start the year with. Lemn Sissay’s powerful memoir My Name Is Why details his time in British foster care and shows the casual cruelty of the authoritarian system he was placed in. He had to fight the government for thirty years to get access to his records and he uses the paper trail of comments by his social worker, reports on his progress, and other pieces of the puzzle to show the gaps in the record and how […]

A Truly Heroic Narrative of Human Effort

On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers by Kate Marsden

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This was a great book to end the year on — compulsively readable, extremely grim, and a triumph to the power of the human spirit. I loved this book and read most of it out loud to my mom as I went, so it would probably make a great audiobook, too. On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers is, as the title describes, a travel narrative of Kate Marsden’s trip from England into the Siberian wilds to visit the lepers there. She was a […]

Holiday Break Comics Reading Reviews

Why Is Everybody Yelling? by Marisabina Russo

Crumbs by Dante Stirling

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

Cheer Up!: Love and Pompoms by Crystal Frasier, Val Wise, and Oscar O. Jupiter

Will Eisner Reader by Will Eisner

Master Keaton Vols. 2 and 3 by Naoki Urasawa, Hokusei Katsushika, and Takashi Nagasaki

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The plus side of sitting around for a week of vacation is that I get a lot of comics reading done! I was lucky enough to receive a lot of interesting books for the holiday. Below are some pocket reviews: Why Is Everybody Yelling? This is a graphic memoir about Marisabina Russo’s childhood growing up in Queens in the late 1950s and 1960s. Her Jewish mother had converted to Catholicism to marry her father before their divorce, and then moved to NYC to raise her […]



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