Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Better to Have Loved and Lost And be Literary Apparently

Artful by Ali Smith

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I’m not sure the best way to come into this novel. I came in knowing nothing about, feeling confused by the end of chapter 1 and then diving into internet search to find out more. This a slow moving meditation on loss and love, how our lives enmesh with those around us and the imprints their leave on them when they go. It’s based on a series of 4 lectures Ali Smith gave; On Time, On From, On Edge, and On Offer and On Reflection. I say based […]

I don’t know WHAT I think about this

Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection by Jamie Hernandez

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Learning of Jamie Hernandez via another book that had characters nicknames inspired by his work was I thought a neat way to learn about someone. It was an important, but also a  smaller piece of that bigger puzzle. Therefore, I wanted to see what the fuss was all about and why did Hernandez inspire this other author? Because of that, several interlibrary loan requests for books were placed for me. I received Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection first. This is a bizarre book. […]

The Calm Before the Storm

The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard

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For two summers the Cazalets – grandparents, three sons and their wives, and their numerous children – gathered in their family country home. Caught up in their domestic dramas, they take little notice of the encroaching threat of war – at first. This is the first of the five Cazalet Chronicles, a series which, drawing upon the experiences of the author and her own family, follows wealthy English family in trade through the turbulent years of World War 2 and its aftermath. Being the first […]

The book I didn’t think I’d like, read anyway, and was delightfully surprised by the results

The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa

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The publisher description of “With simple yet descriptive prose, this novel gives voice to Nana the cat and his owner Satoru as they take to the road on a journey…” is the perfect way to describe The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa (translated by Philip Gabriel). And I thought that before I was even halfway through. I am now (as I start this review) a little over halfway through and it is still perfect. The emotion of the story is soft, but intense as […]

The woman and the slave girl

Raging Clouds by Yudori

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Books sometimes find me. I was going to the library to pick up some I had ordered and Raging Clouds by Yudori was sitting off to the side of the entrance. I almost didn’t go that way to the checkout desk (I usually go left, not right) but something made me go right. And there it was. Fat, shiny and new. It was shyly facing away from me. And that’s the last time this book was shy. Even the librarian when I checked it out wasn’t […]

Marriage is just for the tax benifits and other life lessons

Will You Still Love Me If I Wet the Bed? by Liz Prince

Delayed Replays by Liz Prince

Look Back and Laugh by Liz Prince

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A while back I read the graphic novel, Tomboy by Liz Prince. It was a fun memoir about being a kid that made me wonder about adult Liz. Who is she now? Or at least when her works were published. I found 2018 as the most recent autobiographical work, 2023 for Science Comics: Frogs: Awesome Amphibians (from First Second) and Adventure Time Compendium Vol. 1 in 2024 with other contributors.  Adult Liz is not much different than kid Liz. A bit awkward, weird, funny, has […]



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