I’ve been on a big kick to read more graphic novels. One, because I like the visuals, and two, because I can read them in a day or less. Let’s be honest, it helps increase my book count. This particular graphic novel attracted my attention because it’s by the same author as a book I’ve previously reviewed, Saints. The author, Gene Luen Yang, has done a good job of sharing his parent’s Chinese culture with a dash of his own U.S. culture as well. In […]
Hitler, Sharks, and Torture, Oh My!
As part of my Cannonball reading list, I’ve attempted to include more nonfiction works. Growing up I focused mainly on fiction and only read nonfiction in school for required reading. What attracted me to this title is the fact that it deals with World War II and the Olympics. These are two topics I could spend all day with. The other element that caught my attention was that it’s also by the author of Seabiscuit, a story that I found inspiring. So basically, there wasn’t […]
Never Fall Down
It was second grade. A girl named Thida joined our class a few weeks after the year started. She was from Cambodia, and shockingly, I could find Cambodia on a map then. Our teacher taught us the concept of “refugee” throughout the year. I didn’t really grasp the concept of “refugee” until years later. It was in high school. We were in the second semester five-weeks-until-school’s-over rush to get through U.S. History. We were discussing the end of the Vietnam war and the fallout in […]
Piper Kerman threw her pie for you
Like any red-blooded TV watcher with good taste, I am a huge fan of the Netflix show Orange is the New Black. I mean, what’s not to like? I waited a long time to read the book, because I knew as a memoir it would lack the spicy salaciousness of the show. I am glad I jumped in, however. Piper Kerman does an excellent job of describing her personal experience as a woman incarcerated for white-collar crime, and she explains the kinds of sentencing injustices […]
Striking a Blow for Teenage Geekdom
A cute and well-written teen memoir for those kids—the majority of us, it would seem—who never managed to achieve popularity in school. Maya is a slightly plump, eye-glass wearing smarty to whom celebrity status, beautiful clothes, makeup and jewelry are someone else’s domain. She and her best friend Kenzie occupy the status below the school geeks and goths, according to her list which boasts the volleyball girls and football boys at the top of the heap. She is tired of being on the outs but […]
A review for the book everyone’s read
Unlike the rest of the world, I had not heard of Allie Brosh or her blog until I saw the spate of reviews of her new book, Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened (2013) on Cannonball. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was going to like it when I first heard about it. It looked a little weird and potentially unrelatable, but the reviews were so wholeheartedly positive that I didn’t want to be left […]