Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Like A Wes Anderson Psychological Thriller in Japan

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

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I eagerly picked up Earthlings when I heard it was released. I loved Sayaka Murata’s English language debut, Convenience Store Woman, and was excited to see what the latest translation of her work had to offer. She has a unique and compelling style of prose, and a way of explaining the pressures of Japanese society that is sympathetic to her weird outsiders and totally rational in a slightly twisted way. The cover and back of Earthlings is full of praise for Convenience Store Woman, raving […]

What unspeakable truth is being covered up by stories of ghosts?

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley

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CBRBingo: Fauna – moths and Katsu, who somehow survived. In her sequel to The Watchmaker of Filligree Street Natash Pulley takes the story to Japan.  Thaniel has been sent by the Foreign Office to investigate stories of ghosts at the British legation.  His boss Fanshaw thinks that someone at the legation might be abusing their power over the local staff and an outsider who speaks the language and knows something of the culture might be able to get to the bottom of what’s really going on.  And […]

I need cute kittens, bunny, ice cream and my fuzzy blanket after reading this manga graphic novel!

Beast Complex Volume One by Paru Itagaki

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cbr13bingo Cityscape What a freaking, fracked up, screwed up ride! (only I didn’t say freaking or fracked). I picked this as the Cityscape block as you see the dirty city behind the camel and wolf on the cover. And the stories are set in this same city and in a boarding school within that city. The cover story is the reason I give this book a 3 and not 4 as I was planning after the first few stories. That story made me want to […]

Drawing the Joker

Lady Joker, Volume One by Kaoru Takamura

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Japanese crime stories are often large in scope. They focus on the characters more or less but the writers like to take a broader look at Japanese society. At least, that’s been my experience with the crime fiction that’s been translated state side. Hideo Yokoyama and Natsuo Kirino immediately come to mind. Kaoru Takamura writes in a similar vein. This work was compared to both James Ellroy and Don DeLillo. I didn’t see either, frankly. Although Kaoru Takamura does do the cultural critiquing in the […]

A Tale as old as Time

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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At the turn of the century, a cleft-lipped, clubfooted boarding house owner in rural Korea marries fifteen year old Yangjin, the third daughter of an impoverished farmer. She is no beauty, but neither is Hoonie, her husband. They’re a good match. Together, they run a boarding house in a small, seaside town on an idyllic but poor part of the Korean coast. They try to have children, and after their first three babies die their fourth, a daughter named Sunja, is born. Hoonie dotes upon […]



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