Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Bitter and sweet

Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars: A Graphic Memoir by Rick Louis

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CBR15Passport New Authors to me Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars: A Graphic Memoir is a bittersweet story of living with a child who has an incurable condition. It is spiritual, realistic, and surreal all at once. Sometimes the tone is a bit on the romantic side, but it is a forgivable offense as this is a love story to the child as much as a memoir of the fathers. I have never been a mother, though an aunt three times (plus various “adopted […]

Days Slip Into Days

Fathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev

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Turgenev’s Fathers and Children comes from that lush mid-19th century literary period in Russian literature that also includes the authors Gogol (Dead Souls) and my favorite, Goncharov (Oblomov, in which we spend 500 pages with the world’s laziest man).  There are more famous authors in this period, but they don’t appeal to me the way these three do. There is something soothing about the slow pace of life in these books that really appeals to me.  The protagonists are members of the lesser aristocracy, but […]

“I was rudderless and raw, and the worst part was that no one wanted to talk about any of it.”

Dancing at the Pity Party by Tyler Feder

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Dancing at the Pity Party is, as the subtitle states, “a dead mom graphic memoir.” As someone whose dad died when I was a kid, I related a lot to this book and think it’s one of the best depictions I’ve read of the messy, chaotic, complicated process of grief. Feder’s mother is diagnosed with cancer during her first year away at college, and she dies right when she comes home after finals. The narrative covers their relationship growing up, the illness and death of […]

A very emotional read

Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story by Catherine Pioli

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Author and illustrator Catherine Pioli chronicled her journey as a leukemia patient in Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story. At first, I thought it would be some “sad sack poor me” story. I was wonderfully surprised it was nothing like that. I wasn’t halfway through this graphic novel (reading a reader copy online through Edelweiss) before I know it was going to be a five. And unless some huge middle finger happened it would stay a five for the sheer power of it. Instead, […]

And you thought your mom was cool

The Mother of a Movement: Jeanne Manford: Ally, Activist, and Co-Found of PFLAG by Rob Sanders

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We all should probably have a mother like Jeanne Manford. She was a mother of all mothers by doing what she could do for her children. And when one of them came out as gay during a less understanding time to say the least, she could have disowned him, or told him he was a sinner or worse. She could have done nothing, but instead she said Yes, I will stand up for you and write a letter so the world can see how proud […]

This Series Will Make You Want to Move to Tokyo

Is Kichijoji the Only Place to Live? (Vols 1-5) by Maki Hirochi

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CBR14Bingo: New (the manga is about real estate agents helping people find new apartments) This was my second read of this series and it lived up to my happy memories as a piece of escapism. Is Kichijoji the Only Place to Live? is about two sisters who run a small real estate agency in Tokyo’s popular Kichijoji neighborhood. Whenever someone comes in and says that they want to find a new place in Kichijoji, the sisters end up dragging them to a different neighborhood that […]



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