Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

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I Needed to Understand the Culture More….Maybe….

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

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I watched the movie, Memoirs of Geisha,  many years ago and remember being a little disenchanted by it. I have vivid memories of the beautiful kimono and well-done settings, but the plot itself has largely escaped me. I always meant to read the book that inspired the film to see if I’d like it better, and since we have a far-and-away square, how much farther away can I get from my home than Japan? I was excited to delve into this story until I saw that it was written by a white dude. Now, I have nothing against white dudes writing from […]

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9/16/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:31 |

Aging down the line

Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax

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In the not-too-distant future (it’s about ten years from now) Japan is faced with an aging, ailing population and a declining birth rate. With little they can do about it, they let in migrant workers to take care of their elders, a task most Japanese-born people don’t seem all that eager to do. The migrant workers still have a series of ridiculous and near-draconian rules and regulations placed on them, and have to navigate testing, paying off loans, and more to survive enough to send money back to their homelands and, in most cases, families. Angelica, an elder care nurse, […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

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9/9/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:20 |

Baseball In Japan

You Gotta Have WA by Robert Whiting

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Growing up a big baseball fan, I always knew the sport was popular in Japan. I also always knew it was played differently but I didn’t know why. Not necessarily played differently rules-wise (though there is some of that, like ties for example), but culturally, there were different expectations of the players and the clubs. Robert Whiting smoothly lays the differences out in this book. I worry sometimes that westerners don’t always have a sensitivity to the nuanced differences in respective eastern cultures but he does. Despite things that made my eyes pop out of my head, there was no […]

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8/19/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:80 |

A Beautiful and Difficult Novel: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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Pachinko – Min Jin Lee Finished on April 23, took 17 days to read 5 stars on Goodreads Genre: Historical Fiction Rating 2/3 Historical Fiction Pachinko is a beautiful and heart-breaking book. The plot extends over multiple decades of one woman’s life: Sunja. Sunja was born in Japanese-occupied Korea, but eventually marries and moves to Japan prior to the outbreak of World War Two. We follow Sunja and her family (four generations) all the way through the 1980s and their lives in Japan. I was completely ignorant of how Koreans were treated in Japan, even after independence. This book was […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

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6/29/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:17 |

The Convenience of Individuality

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

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This is one of those strange little books that I found reaffirmed my belief in the idea of being true to yourself. There are a lot of platitudes about that concept, mostly Disney-fied or Rom-Comish in execution, and those platitudes always ring hollow to me. They seem sacharine, or manipulative, or frustratingly narrow in execution. What Sayaka Murata offers in Convenience Store Woman is a character so out of synch with the rest of her society, but so in synch with the world of her store, that you can’t help but appreciate and marvel at it. Keiko Fukuwara is different. […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

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5/26/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:10 |

When a piece of history tries to make peace

Tails from History: A Puppy for Helen Keller by May Nakamura

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Tails from History: A Puppy for Helen Keller shows how the author, May Nakamura, is obviously a fan of their subject. You can tell how admired Keller was in her quest for peace, you can Nakamura likes dogs and of course the Akita breed and you can tell she admires the Japanese people and land. But also, you get a fun story about a small slice of a person who was a trailblazer on so many levels. This, perhaps little-known part of Keller’s life, was refreshing and made me want to learn a little more about this part of her […]

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Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

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3/29/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:98 |

Existential Dread Served With Your Crime Fiction

The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura

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I didn’t love The Thief but it’s one that will definitely stay with me. It’s not my typical tale: a story about an almost nameless career petty thief heisting wallets that shifts between the past and the present. In the past, he did a controversial job for some heavy hitter criminals in Japanese society and now he’s on the run. In the present, he’s done running and is getting by with thieving when he meets a poor boy and his mother, the former of whom he takes under his wing, the latter he has sex with seemingly out of pity. Because there’s […]

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2/4/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:16 |

Brilliant!

Out by Natsuo Kirino

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Rarely am I able to describe books in one word but I can do so with Out: kaleidoscopic. Natsuo Kirino is a popular writer in Japan and I’ve wanted to get into her work for some time. Personally, I had wanted to start with Grotesque but I saw this at a bookstore for a reasonable price and figured What the heck? Well sometimes fate deals you quite a hand. Coincidentally, this is a major theme in Out: how the actions and behaviors of others impact people. We’ll get to that. But first, I must lavish Natsuo Kirino with Hosannas for her characters. What great […]

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  • Out by Natsuo Kirino

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1/29/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:13 |


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