Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Magic!!! (jazz hands)

Pacheco and the Witch of the Mountain: A Graphic Novel by Juan E. Zambrano

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We have seen this story before: Boys cannot do magic. They cannot be witches. The non witches also think witches are evil and bad. Witches think non witches are beneath them and if they have any trace of magic it is not pure and therefore not worthy of paying attention to.  But in Pacheco and the Witch of the Mountain: A Graphic Novel by Juan E. Zambrano (due June 2025) this story is told with a bit of fun and humor, plus a few twists […]

The Myth, the Magic, The Woman

Medea by Blandine Le Callet

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In Medea by Blandine Le Callet, Nancy Peña (Illustrator), Montana Kane (Translator) the question you must first ask yourself is can you trust this narrator or not? Then, are you seeing the true story or not? Has she been villainized to take blame away from the real culprits? Or is she the monster history says? Those questions and more, will come alive in this adaptation of Medea’s story.  The afterwards show how the historical, myth and magic all came together, along with the creators adaptations, […]

You are already dead – IYKYK and now I know

Fist of the North Star, vol. 1-14 by Buronson, Tetsuo Hara

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This is for vols 1-14, which is all my library has, although I did request vol. 15. My draw to the Fist of the North Star manga series was mostly that RGG/Sega made a video game of it and they made the Yakuza games. Written in the 80s and set in the Mad Max 1990s, the story is about Kenshiro wandering the post nuclear war wasteland pouting and blowing people up. Sometimes he has allies; always he has enemies; probably he has a plot. But […]

The Art of the Meal

Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen

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Babette’s Feast is only 45 pages long (does that make it a novella or a short story?), and while you can easily finish it in one sitting, it is the kind of story that makes one go back and re-read and ponder the message Dinesen is imparting. I remember when this story was made into an award-winning film back in the 1980s, many religious communities identified with its communal/eucharistic imagery. While that is undeniably there, what strikes me reading it today is its message about […]

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover?

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

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Ok, I admit it. I judged a book by its cover. I really try to not be shallow or too focused on aesthetics when I walk through a bookstore, but I admit that the cover for Cloud Cuckoo Land has been catching my eye for a few years now. I know a good cover has no relation to the quality of the book, but something must draw my attention when I am not hunting with a specific book in mind. So, when I saw Cloud […]

Raise the Red Flag

All Fours by Miranda July

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For years I’ve been perturbed by a certain segment of BookTok and other literary-based social media which is preoccupied with so-called “red flag” books. These are usually novels like Infinite Jest or Catcher in the Rye. Any man who proclaims a red flag book as his favorite is to be avoided, apparently. While I take the point that many a young man has taken the wrong lessons from a work of fiction, I tend to think that these books can be and often are admired […]



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