Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“We’ll continue to hurt others and be hurt in the future too. And one day, something even worse might happen…We have a chance to change things for the better. If we raise a smart and courageous child.”

A Smart and Courageous Child by Miki Yamamoto

by Leave a Comment

It’s always thrilling to me to see a publisher trying something new, and Tokyopop publishing A Smart and Courageous Child strikes me as a bold move. They are not usually the publisher you expect to do literary manga, and finding this in the bookstore made my day. I am constantly pining for American publishers to translate more manga like this, aimed at adults and dealing with everyday life. There’s so much manga in Japan that is probably never going to get translated here, so anything […]

Woman, Mother, Interpreter, Spy

A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe

by Leave a Comment

I knew early on this was not going to be the book I expected and I mean that in a complimentary sense. I thought this would be a cozy-esque female housewife in the 50s using her wiles to navigate Manhattan cocktail parties and deduce who may or may not be a Soviet sympathizer. There’s nothing cozy about this, however. It’s a raw, intriguing look at the perils of motherhood for women in the 1950s, with a spy story tacked on in the background. The espionage […]

Mom and Me…

I Wish I Could Say "Thank You" by Yukari Takinami

by Leave a Comment

After reading GentleRain’s review of I Wish I Could Say “Thank You” by Yukari Takinami, I researched and found that while my bookstore could order me a copy, I decided that I would go the interlibrary loan route. I figured I could purchase a copy if I enjoyed it at a later time. And I probably will do that, but instead of keeping it for myself, I will donate it to my local library. I think others might be interested in this not easy to […]

Darkest moments and hope

Finding the Light: A Mother's Journey from Trauma to Healing  by Marian Henley

by 2 Comments

I received an email a few days ago, with eight online reader links to books coming out from March 2024 to May 2024. One of those titles was Finding the Light: A Mother’s Journey from Trauma to Healing by Marian Henley. At first I thought it was another older title, as the covers were similar, but then I noticed it was not due early March 2024. Now, I have said my reading for 2024 is to be fun, well there really is nothing fun about this love letter to […]

To be or not to be is a very personal question

I Don’t Want to Be a Mom by Irene Olmo

by Leave a Comment

When I saw the title of this graphic novel by Irene Olmo, I Don’t Want to Be a Mom I assumed a few things. The first, due to the cover  (which I thought was a young girl who did not want to grow up to be a mom), was that she was a trans man. But then I thought she was a lesbian and had some wrong idea they do not become mothers. Or even that she was asexual, had a bad mother herself, or […]

The warmth and joy of childhood, perfectly captured in manga form

Yotsuba&! (Vols 1-15) by Kiyihiko Azuma

by Leave a Comment

CBR14Bingo: Heart (this manga is full of heart and warm feelings) I honestly find it easier to write negative reviews than positive ones, because when I love a book intensely it’s hard to come up with something beyond “I love this! Read it!” But I will do my best to get across why you should spend some time in the world of Yotsuba&!. This series follows an extremely energetic 5-year old, the titular Yotsuba, and her adventures. In the first volume, she and her dad move […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo