Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Contemporary history

Journey to Tomioka by Laurent Galandon

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Journey to Tomioka by Laurent Galandon, translated by Owen Smith and Anne Smith with illustrations by Michaël Crouzat was read via an online reader copy. In June 2026, however, you can find a copy, which I highly recommend. The publisher, First Second, has become one of those publishers for me that I might not always love something they published, in fact, I might not even like it, but I always respect what happened and the time it takes to make something that can be thoughtful, […]

Historical Fiction Graphic Novel in Translation

Surrounded: America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832  by Wilfrid Lupano, Stéphane Fert (illustrator)

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Along with From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea I picked up Surrounded: America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832 from the library to help (hopefully) re-set my reading brain. This is a graphic novel in translation (originally written and published in French) which is focuses in on a more unknown bit of American history. I feel comfortable calling it such as this is one of my general areas and this school and the court cases surrounding it had missed me, even though Crandall v. State (of Connecticut) was one of the first civil rights […]

“You can fret yourself right out of doing anything! …The worst thing you can fall into is thinking you have to be deep or profound in your work, and being afraid to appear dumb, unhip, uncool.”

Drawn Together by Aline Crumb and Robert Crumb

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Dan Nadal’s biography of Robert Crumb had a big impact on me last year and so I’m continuing my exploration with Drawn Together, a collection of the collaborative comics he did with his wife, Aline. Aline was a comics pioneer in her own right, and seeing their back and forth here is fascinating, especially with their contrasting styles and outlooks on life. The comics span from 1974 through 2010, so we get to see the development of their relationship and of how they built their […]

“Straight-forward feelings hit you like a truck, don’t they? Isn’t it nice?”

Director Akasaka's Princely Training Course by Wacoco Waco

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This was shrinkwrapped when I bought it, so I didn’t have the chance to look inside and just bought based off the cover and the fact that I like what Kuma publishes 80%+ of the time. I do in this case wish I’d been able to preview it because it was fine but not something I’m going to keep. Akasaka is a director at a successful company but hasn’t been able to find a satisfactory relationship. During a night out in Ni-Chome, the gay neighborhood […]

“It’s inadvisable for anyone to fall for a host like me.”

Call Me Master by KedamaShiba

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Call Me Master deals with the world of Japanese host clubs, which is a very specific area of employment that it would be probably helpful to know about before reading this book. Ichinose is the number one host at Club de Rois and he’s very proud of that. In addition to his duties of providing companionship in the club to the clients, he also has to help out behind the scenes and he’s worn out. He wants an assistant, and when the new host Tsukasa […]

“On this island where gemstones bloom like flowers…there lived a powerful demon king.”

Dear Demon King by Emu Soutome

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There’s so much here that I like and it just didn’t click for me as a whole — magic, BL, interesting world building, solid art — none of it enough to make this something I really enjoyed. Dear Demon King has a complicated setup about a world where the demon king Kougyoku rules over a floating island full of magical beasts, and also the island has all of these gemstones full of magical power on them that humans want, and fifty years ago the humans attacked […]



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