Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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About vega-table

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Seattle area hermit, staying in with my video games, books, cats, and beer. Living the dream.

vega-table's Reviews:

Who Made Us Monsters? Narrative Psychology and The Female Jewish Gothic

Odessa by Gabrielle Sher

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Gabrielle Sher’s Odessa started from her doctoral dissertation titled “Who Made Us Monsters? Narrative Psychology and The Female Jewish Gothic.” I assume it evolved a lot to go from academic writing to horror novel, but I think the question was answered. The book doesn’t explain much. It doesn’t have a historic context note, there are no explanations or translations for the many words that I believe are Yiddish. This works because Sher is very good at giving you enough context to figure. For example, you […]

What do you want to do tonight, Kino? The same thing we do every night, Hermes… try to travel the world

Kino’s Journey: the Beautiful World by Iruka Shiimiya

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The manga Kino’s Journey: the Beautiful World is by Iruka Shiimiya. It’s based on the light novels by Keiichi Sigsawa. There have been two anime adaptations. This review is only for the manga, but if something from another version slips in, sorry. Kino is a professional tourist. Hermes is their motorrad, which means a sentient talking non-flying motorcycle. They visit countries. Kino stays for three days, preferably at a cheap motel with a hot shower, then leaves. The series is like a series of short […]

Life – you gotta do it

Stone Fruit by Lee Lai

Cannon by Lee Lai

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Lee Lai’s graphic novels Stone Fruit and Cannon are both about being queer Chinese women in North America. They’re about people and relationships and living lives that don’t really have beginning-middle-end stories. They just have yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Repeat. Stone Fruit – Why is it called that? I think it’s because stone fruit are soft and sweet. But if you continue eating blindly, they get hard and bitter. It’s such common knowledge that there’s a hard pit in the middle, no one will think […]

Japanese Gothic

Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

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Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker was perfectly fine. I’d even be comfortable saying it was good. In 2026 Lee Turner takes a lot of drugs to treat insomnia, and probably other things that were never named. He unnerves his father, but gets along with his father’s Japanese girlfriend. After Lee kills his college roommate in a sleep medication blackout, he moves to Japan to hide. Which he can do because part of his blackout included a solid coverup. In 1877, after the samurai class […]

A family can be two sisters, one of those sister’s descendants, two other sisters, a magic whale, a sentient island, an omnipotent museum, and academic papers

Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

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I almost reread Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta two or three times during my first and only read. Every 20ish pages, I thought what I just read revealed that I was reading something totally different from what I thought. So I started again. Eventually I gave that up. Mostly. It stars two sets of estranged sisters – Myung and Laleh (autonyms based on how fun they are to say), and Wisa and Magali. It is a dense, rich world. As far as I […]

I didn’t even mention the gratuitous nudity

The Science of Ghosts by Lilah Sturges and El Garing

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The Science of Ghosts by Lilah Sturges and El Garing stars Doctor Joy Ravenna – a forensic parapsychologist, trans lesbian, and grantee. She also solves murder(s) for reasons that have to do with all of the above and funding may be the most important one. You can’t do paranormal psychology without a grant. Joy used to work with the police as a psychologist. She was married to a pretty detective and they were probably happy enough. Then she transitioned, her presumably heterosexual wife left her, […]



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