Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Yellowface: what a wild ride

Yellowface by RF Kuang

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mood music: t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l – willow smith This book was a wild ride. I had a very love-hate relationship with it, and it took time to finish because of this. A social commentary about the literary publishing world, it tackles issues with diversity and inclusivity and how minority writers are boxed into specific genres by their publishing companies in service of diversifying the signed authors. The story follows June Haywayd, a young […]

a lovely story of what it means to be human…

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

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…with a godawful cover and title. ARRRGH! This is a magical little slice of existence, but one would never know that based upon the generic title and messy cover art. Honestly, had I not been introduced without the cover, I can’t say that I would have picked it up! Adina enters our world at the same moment that Voyager (that of Carl Sagan’s Golden Record) leaves this very same world. There’s some sort of transference of energy and matter; one magical thing leaves and another […]

My Darling Satsuma

The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer

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Bob Mortimer is a UK comedian whose panel-show appearances are legendary. His best work is on the show Would I Lie to You?, where the combination of his quick wit and utterly insane lifestyle make his preposterous tales impossible to assess for veracity. Listening to Mortimer unwind a real corker of a tale is a joy to behold, whether or not he’s telling the truth. Thus I was highly intrigued when I heard he had written a novel. The Satsuma Complex (published in the U.S. […]

Forget everybody else and just be

Convenience Store Woman by Kayaka Murata

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. Sorry, I’m back on that autism beat once more. Murata’s book covers were just too aesthetically pleasing to not read right away. Well, at least this one. I almost launched straight into Earthlings after this before learning of its laundry list of content warnings and deciding to put a pin in that for the moment. It’s never officially stated that our main character in Convenience Store Woman is autistic, but her copy-pasting of others phrases, expressions, and tone, her obsession with her job, and the […]

Left me feeling cold (pun intended)

Before the Coffee Gets Gold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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Having already mistakenly read the sequel to this, not realizing it was part of a series when I caught wind of it on BookTok, I thought it only made sense to pick up the rest of the series and start with the first book that I’d accidentally skipped. Suffice it to say, I think Kawaguchi was still yet to find their footing with this one. Whereas with its sequel, there were multiple moments where I was moved to tears, a rare feat for a book, […]

Ishiguro, I think I WILL let you go…

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

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My wife’s father loves to say of the movie, “it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.” I too didn’t care for the movie when I watched it all those years ago, having watched it for that hook (humans cloned for their organs) and gotten little to satisfy my desire for said hook. My wife has persisted, throughout the years we’ve been together, though, that the book is better. So, with audiobooks included with Spotify Premium, I started listening through Never Let Me Go, and boy was […]



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