Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Join the Yay for YA Discussion About YA Books Now  

About vega-table

CBR17 Participant
CBR18 Participant
CBR18 Levels
CBR18 Comments

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

vega-table's Reviews:

Checking in with the X-Men

Uncanny X-Men, vol. 1 by Simone, Gail

X-Men, vol. 1 by Makay, Jed

Exceptional X-Men, vol. 1 by Ewing, Eve

by Leave a Comment

Several years ago, I decided I wanted to make an effort to get back into the X-Men (being 20ish years behind). This happened to be around the start of the Krakoa era in the franchise, so it was a good time to rejoin I was told. It’s a reboot, the guy at the comic store said. I didn’t like it and stopped reading. More recently, I heard the Krakoa era was ending and they’re starting over again, so I tentatively ordered the TPB (are they […]

Thinly veiled fascism warning could be thinly veiled something else in another year

The Memory Police by Ogawa, Yoko

by 1 Comment

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa is just sad. The evil dystopian memory police make people forget concepts under the guise of forgetting stuff. People accept it because forgetting stuff like music boxes and novels wouldn’t make you forget music or imagination. Except it totally does and people move on without whatever it was that they forgot about. Because what are they going to do? Remember? Pshaw. One day all the roses are gone. The response is, “Welp, roses were nice. Guess I’ll forget about […]

Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons is coincidental

Memoirs of a Woman Doctor: A Novel by El Saadawi, Nawal

by Leave a Comment

Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi is very short and doesn’t have much to keep track of. I’m not sure any characters even have names. After a dense several hundred page novel with dozens of characters to keep track of, it was very nice to read something short and light. Although it wasn’t that light for how little happens. Because sexism. The protagonist is an unnamed girl, turned student, turned doctor, turned woman in mid-20th century Egypt. These identities overlap, but there […]

Not to beat death of the author to death, but…

The Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

by Leave a Comment

Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has a great title and a great cover. The novel itself isn’t quite as good as the name and cover art, but it’s pretty damn good. It’s also pretty damn pretentious and happy with itself. But the author – of whom I knew nothing when I started – has earned the right to be self satisfied far more than I’ve earned any right to criticize him for it. I was just going to copy and paste a […]

Unburied Gays vs Hollywood

Bury Your Gays by Tingle, Chuck

by Leave a Comment

Chuck Tingle probably needs no introduction, although I’ve been surprised. His book will get one. Bury Your Gays is a horror novel that is too long to be a novela, but it’s not long. I hope it will one day be an early Tingle horror, but for now it’s just one of his few traditionally published non-eroticas. Misha, a successful Hollywood queer horror author, has been ordered to kill his queer coded characters if they have a gay kiss on TV – because of the […]

Longtime small time fan reads, enjoys musician’s biography

Space is the Place by Szwed, John

by Leave a Comment

Sun Ra denies being born because being birthed is to ‘be earthed’, or buried. And if you’re buried, you’re dead, so he was not born. On the other hand, his sister said he was born in Alabama at his aunt’s house (by a train station). And so begins John Szwed’s biography of the musician Sun Ra, Space is the Place. The biography was mostly facts. Sun Ra said this, John Szwed found out something else and put the two narratives side by side so the […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo