Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Pick your poison

Apothecary Diaries (manga), vols. 1-13 by Hyūga, Natsu, Nekokurage, et. al

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Bingo row 5 – white Anyone else notice that manga with women and girls as protagonists tend to have white-based covers and spines? I don’t know if that’s a trend or coincidentally what I read. The Apothecary Diaries from author Natsu Hyūga is an ongoing series in the form of light novels (aka easy to read books with pictures), two manga series, and an anime. So that’s four simultaneously ongoing series of the same story and despite what people on Reddit say, they’re all about […]

The title says it all

Death of the Author by Okorafor, Nnendi

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Bingo row 1- review I’ve been a fan of Nnendi Okorafor for a while, but her books have always been vaguely unpleasant. Not because they’re bad, but because they hit something in my psyche that is very tender. Every time I finish one of her works, I say that’s the last one. I don’t have time to need recovery from a book. And then, she draws me back in. Death of the Author came out earlier this year and everyone loved it. I’ve seen Okorafor’s […]

Folktales and cycles through history

Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai

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Songs for Ghosts fulfills the “culture” square on CBR17 Bingo. Songs for Ghosts is a beautiful, tragic story of the power of stories and love, as well as the way past choices can create cycles throughout time. I’m unfamiliar with it, but in the afterword the author talks about Songs for Ghosts being a retelling of Madama Butterfly opera by Puccini where Cio-Cio-San has more agency than just the reductive submissive wife trope. Adam is a seventeen year old whose boyfriend just broke up with […]

Quite a Grab Bag

Waiting for the Fear by Oguz Atay

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cbr17bingo Black A collection of stories from an unusual author, a Turkish writer who lived from 1934 to 1977.  Some of them are fables, some are mystical, and a few are more realistic.  For me, some resonated, and some were impenetrable.  And a few had a sly sense of humor. Like Not Yes Not No, which cracked me up.  A young man gets a job answering letters to a paper asking for personal advice (think Dear Abby).  M.C. writes in to state he has written […]

What do you call a family of Richards? A bag of Dicks.

No Body No Crime by Tess Sharpe

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Tess Sharpe’s No Body No Crime isn’t based on Taylor Swift’s “No Body No Crime,” but it’s a good song to have on the playlist while reading. There’s plenty of atmosphere here, but the book is more explosive than atmospheric. The violence piles up quickly, and so do the bodies and the missing people. This was such a fun read. I can’t talk much about what happens, because the fun is in discovering for yourself how a missing woman, a plane crash, and a car […]

When your abandoned lighthouse is not so abandoned after all

The Ghost of Wreckers Cove by Angelica Del Campo, Christian Argiz and Liniers

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Cbr17bingo G (G is for Ghost) When I find a book from Papercutz I usually have an extreme I really like this or I really don’t. Now, granted The Ghost of Wreckers Cove by Angelica Del Campo, Christian Argiz and Liniers (illustrator) had a few bumps as I am an adult reader who has to remember sometimes you need to suspend your “reality need” for the sake of a good story.  I was debating if I wanted to read this graphic novel as it looked […]



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