Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Before he rumbled in the Bronx, wore a tuxedo and voiced a monkey

The Rise (and Falls) of Jackie Chan by Kristen Mai Giang

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The Rise (and Falls) of Jackie Chan is one of my favorite picture books that I have read, or at least, read this year. Kristen Mai Giang’s picture book highlights the life of the actor Jackie Chan. It is humorous, informative, and inspirational. From a poor child living in an ambassador’s home, but was limited to a small room and forced to share a bed with his parents, to international martial arts and move star, Chan’s life unfolds. Due to the poverty his family faced, […]

Gao’s debut is messy, but yet, it is wonderfully so!

Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao

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Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American is a messy book. But it is all wrapped up in a neatly created graphic novel. The world of Laura Gao has been seen in other stories (this is a coming-of-age story with features we know: immigration, expectations of family, coming out), but hers is completely unique to her and therefore, to the reader. At first, the book seems like it might be about the pandemic, and what happens to her and her family as Chinese […]

Drop whatever you’re doing and read this book right now

The Devil Comes Courting by Courtney Milan

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Disclaimer! This was an ARC granted to me by the author, which has in no way influenced my review. I had also pre-ordered the books many months ago, because Courtney Milan is an auto-buy for me, every time. Amelia Smith is a Chinese woman raised by English missionaries in China. When she was just a little girl, her birth mother, a woman fleeing during one of the many conflicts in the country, asked Mrs. Acheson, the woman who Amelia has thought of as her mother […]

Make Friends With Your Megalodons

The Devil Comes Courting by Courtney Milan

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I love this book so much. By chapter two of The Devil Comes Courting, I was introducing Captain Greyson Hunter to the world as my new book boyfriend. By the end of the book I was curled in a fleece blanket crying and so happy that Greyson and Amelia finally pulled themselves together enough to stop being idiots and fully commit to each other. Courtney Milan is magical. Greyson is looking for someone called Silver Fox who he wants to employ to create a telegraphic […]

The ones that I couldn’t finish (NOT my double Cannonball!)

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Trelegemeproblemet (The Three-Body Problem) by Liu Cixin

Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon

American Demon by Kim Harrison

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Dear readers, I’m not going to lie, I’m racing against the clock to get all of my reviews finished in time for the CBR12 deadline (12 noon EST – or 6 pm Oslo time). I also need to finish 25% of the final novel I’m reviewing, co-parent my autocratic, demanding, and rather clingy almost-three-year-old, plan and prep a three-course New Year’s meal, and possibly do some last-minute shopping. No pressure, right? So when fellow Cannonballer Pixifer posted a review with all of her DNF’s for the year, […]

The Paper Menagerie & Other Stories by Ken Liu

All the Flavors by Ken Liu

The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary by Ken Liu

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Always on the lookout for speculative short fiction, I came across Ken Liu on an internet list somewhere. The little bio said he’d won the Hugo and the Nebula for his short stories and translations, and as I’m ashamed to say I’ve read very little by Chinese-American authors, I immediately ran to the library. They had his short story collection, The Paper Menagerie & Other Stories, and even though I knew he was award winning, I was not prepared for just how life-changing this collection would […]

https://cannonballread.com/2020/12/the-paper-menagerie-other-stories-and-all-the-flavors-and-the-man-who-ended-history-a-documentary-ale/



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