Cannonball Read 18

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. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: GentleRain's Quick Questions interview.)

GentleRain's Reviews:

“My feelings are mine, and mine alone.”

Flip Flip Slowly by Mame Ohtako

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Flip Flip Slowly is a one volume gay romance manga that follows the developing relationship between Kouta, a librarian in a rural area, and Jinichi, an adjunct professor who shows up and becomes a regular. Kouta is a cheerful and thoughtful young man, while Jinichi is sad and reserved. Through their meetings at the library, they get to know each other and feelings slowly deepen between them. Kouta has to unpack some of Jinichi’s negative beliefs about himself and give him the space to make […]

“Love grows over time” — A Sweet End to a Sweet Series

You Can't Live All on Your Own! (Vol. 3) by Mizoko Tsuno

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First completed book of 2026! I am working my way through a 900+ page volume of Chips Channon’s diaries, which I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say about, but I’m not done reading that yet. In the meantime, I continue my exploration of the current manga scene as per usual. You Can’t Live All on Your Own is a josei manga series, so it is aimed at women in their 20s. The series follows four women who live together and their disparate romantic and […]

“…he was one of the happiest men who had ever lived — happy in his family, his home, his books, his work, his garden, his travels, and the world of nature and people around him.”

Harold Nicolson: A Biography (Volume II: 1930-1968) by James Lees-Milne

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This second volume of James Lees-Milne’s biography of Harold Nicolson covers 1930-1968. With the large amount of world and personal history that this book covers, JLM continues to masterfully shepherd the reader through Nicolson’s fascinating life. I enjoyed this volume more than the first one (although they are both excellent) mainly because with him leaving the Foreign Office, the foreign policy explanations die down a bit and I am more well versed in the history of this era. While the Paris Conference and the Lausanne […]

“Dex drew one shaky breath, then walked away, each step sure and steady.

Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers

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I read an article recently about the current state of science fiction where the thesis was basically that the field doesn’t have a clear vision of the future anymore and isn’t providing the service that it used to to the culture at large. I have qualms about this point of view because I’m a pretty optimistic person and the amount of books being published under the umbrella of science fiction make it hard for me to make a coherent argument that covers all of them […]

“One of Harold Nicolson’s many endearing traits was to invent occasions brought about by some preposterous and improbable action on his part.”

Harold Nicolson: A Biography (Volume I: 1886-1929) by James Lees-Milne

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One of my continued passions is Edwardian era history and as I keep reading more books about it, some people pop up over and over again until finally I either buy a biography or their letters and diaries to figure out what they were up to. Harold Nicolson is one of those people who show up in every book you will read about the 1900s through to the 1960s, as he was involved in huge amounts of historical events and had a very busy social […]

“Baba will realize what he’s missing, and he’ll come home so we can be a normal, happy family again.”

How To Draw A Secret by Cindy Chang

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Well, my New Year’s resolution to keep up with my book reviews has not gone amazingly the first half of the year, but there’s always time to refocus so I’m trying to get back into it. Fortunately this summer of grad school classes hasn’t been as overwhelming as last year, so I have been able to do some reading for fun and have some books to review. I even have had the time to go to the local bookstore twice, which is pretty astonishing versus […]



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