Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Towards the hospital waiting room

A Story about Cancer with a Happy Ending by India Desjardins

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We know there will be a happy ending in A Story about Cancer with a Happy Ending, as the title tells us that. Therefore this Columbo-like story (if you know what that means, we can be friends) by India Desjardins (and Solange Ouellet is the translator) of knowing the ending, but seeing how the characters get there, does not have a surprise at the end, but it does have an emotion that has not been felt for a while in these characters lives: Hope.  Told […]

Thyme travels

Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin

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As an adult, I found a few areas in Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin that were not “smooth” for me, however, from ages 10 to 14 I would have enjoyed it. You are there with our narrator Thyme (like the clock, with a HY). You worry about fitting in at your new school, you worry about your siblings and your relationships with them, you worry about your old friendships, you are sad and happy, you try to balance your “now and then” and along the […]

“She seems to be doing fine somewhere. But no, she’s actually nowhere.”

I Wish I Could Say "Thank You" by Yukari Takinami

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I Wish I Could Say “Thank You” is an autobiographical manga about the author’s mother dying of pancreatic cancer and how she and her family deal with this transitional phase in their lives. I got this from MoCCA Fest and haven’t seen it for sale in any bookstores around me, which cements why I like going to comic-cons. You get to see stuff from smaller presses that you might overlook or might be unavailable depending on distribution, and that’s often the material that I find […]

Tak Ada Peluru Ajaib / There is No Magic Bullet

Kanker, Biografi Suatu Penyakit by Siddharta Mukherjee; Rahmat Purwono 

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(The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer) It’s now edging onto the last part of the year, and I want to mention my most significant (read: stupid) reading challenge. I had some downtime in Australia earlier this year, and I told myself I was going to try to read something in Indonesian again. That something turned out to be an Indonesian translation of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Or Kanker: Biografi Suatu Penyakit (Cancer: Biography of a Disease). Why this […]

For a long time I had tried to belong in America, wanted and wished for it more than anything, but in that moment all I wanted was to be accepted as a Korean by two people who refused to claim me.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

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“Mom’s afraid you two will fight if you come,” my father admitted later. “She knows she has to put all her focus into getting better.” I assumed the seven years I’d lived away from home had healed the wounds between us, that the strain built up in my teenage years had been forgotten. Now we were closer than ever, but my father’s admission revealed there were memories of which my mother could not let go.” ― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart “Sweet braised black […]

Great Book—But Still Not Pleased With The Outcome.

The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA by Jorge L. Contreras

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I love a good turn of narrative non-fiction. Back in the early years of my PhD—which was in genetics—the topic of gene ownership and gene patents was a huge deal. If you were working in the field, there was no way you could have avoided getting dragged into the discussion; whether you were hearing about it from a medical perspective, an agricultural perspective or a ‘shit, I was broke doing my degree all those years ago so you’ll never guess what I did*’ perspective, you […]



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