Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Magic Of Libraries

What you are looking for is in the library by Michiko Aoyama

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My first review of this year is a book I actually read towards the end of last year – Michiko Aoyama’s ‘What you are looking for is in the library’. This was a birthday present from my sister as she knows I love Japanese arts and culture and when I got round to reading it I really appreciated her choice. The book is part of a trend I’ve seen – cosy ‘mystical realism’ books featuring a place such as a cafe or store where visitors […]

I can’t stop thinking about my lost pizza.

The Kamogawa Food Detectives (The Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1) by Hisashi Kashiwai

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I maintain that this premise is amazing, and it needs to exist in real life. The idea of food I will never taste again HAUNTS ME. I am not even being dramatic, I am being so real with you right now. (My #1 pick for this would be Pizza D’Amore’s piping hot square pizza slices, in the Paradise Valley Mall. AND I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE.) I will also admit that the premise hit me so strongly that I gave this book more stars than […]

It’s hard to resist a book with a cat on the cover

We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida

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I’m probably late to the trend (I usually am), but I hadn’t noticed until fairly recently how many books written in Japan center around cats. Last year, I read the touching If Cats Disappeared from the World, and the surprisingly comforting Blanket Cats. The disappointing Before the Coffee Gets Cold did not include a cat, but it should have, and I think the publishers knew it needed one because they put a cat on the cover. Anyway, I’m continuing the trend in 2026 with a […]

If you like your coffee with extra saccharine

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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CBR 17 BINGO: Work, because the stories take place in the coffee shop where Kei, Nagare, and Kazu all work Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a collection of four short stories loosely combined into a novel. The characters overlap from story to story, and some incidents in earlier stories come into play later in the book, but for the most part, each chapter stands alone. The Funiculi Funicular, run by husband and wife team Nagare and Kei, appears to be an ordinary cafe, but […]

I’m on a roll with Japanese stories containing cats! (This review is cat approved)

The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu

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CBR 17 BINGO: “B” (for “Blanket”) On a recent visit to my local library, I was attracted to this book by the adorable illustration on the cover. Reading the book jacket, I learned that The Blanket Cats is a collection of seven stories about a pet shop in Tokyo that rents out cats for three days and two nights. Each cat comes with a special blanket to which they are very attached (do not lose or wash that blanket!). Some customers have practical reasons for […]

A detective story you can actually (maybe) solve before the end.

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada

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This is another book I got from the recommendation section of I Don’t Even Own a Television. It is an admitted failing of mine that I haven’t read a whole lot of non-western fiction. We own more than a few untouched Haruki Murakami books. I’ve seen a fair amount of Korean and Chinese film, but that’s not at all the same thing. So probably the biggest hurdle I had to get over in reading this was getting past the frequent digressions into memories and emotions […]



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