Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Archives for December 2021

Cute in a not eat your face way

Fly by Night by Tara O’Connor.

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Thanks to my holiday book exchange, I had a chance to pick up Fly by Night by Tara O’Connor.  I had started a sampler awhile back and thought it would be slightly on the slower side, but still it was a fascinating concept. Twin sisters, one who has gone missing, and spooky felt right.  And yes, it was not super-fast pace, but kept things moving. The idea of true supernature never came into play for those few pages, but it quickly does once you get […]

I Wish I Could Read Japanese

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

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One of my friends brought Kitchen back from her study-abroad to Japan in the mid 00s. I was woefully non-diverse in my reading at the time, so my first read of this book in 2008 was mostly vague and unaware. It left no impression. I didn’t even remember I owned it until re-shelving a bunch of books from packing boxes this spring. An MFA and six years of CBR diverse reading under my belt later, this read was a vastly different experience, the most striking of […]

Do not read this hungry

The Inspired Vegan by Bryant Terry

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Sometimes it’s hard to tell if The Inspired Vegan is a cookbook, a set of media recommendations, or a social justice manifesto. Bryant Terry is a recognized advocate for all 3 things though, so it makes sense he’d combine them. One of the more interesting things about this book is how it’s set up, seasonally but also by menu. Each menu has some noted inspirations, usually musical or literary but also sometimes a film gets in there too. Individual recipes also have their own soundtrack […]

Poetry that’s actually readable. Read it.

Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman

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I suspect like most of the world, I learned who Amanda Gorman was within hours of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Turns out her collection Call us What We Carry is every bit as good as “The Hill We Climb” which is included as the final poem in the book. I should be up front, I don’t typically read poetry for fun, in part because I work with it so much professionally. Gorman’s book though is an exception, even more so in that it wasn’t a struggle […]

The Five Books of [Robert] Moses – Arthur Nersesian (2020)

The Five Books of [Robert] Moses by Arthur Nersesian

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Given how long some books sit on my shelves before I finally get to them, the fact that I am picking up this 1500 page book only a year after I bought it (and when it was published) and tackling it means something I think. It doesn’t hurt that earlier this year I read The Power Broker for the first time, Robert Caro’s 1200 page book about Robert Moses’s life and career as the (often extra legal) architect of New York. How that basically worked […]

I really want a fancy gourmet donut now

Donut Fall in Love by Jackie Lau

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Disclaimer! This was an ARC from Netgalley. My views are my own, and I had already pre-ordered the book before getting the advanced reader copy. Ryan Kwok is grateful for the opportunities he’s been given. While his latest movie, a romantic comedy, isn’t getting the ravest of reviews, he’s fully aware that it’s unusual enough for rom coms to star Asian actors and he’s lucky to have gotten the chance as a romantic leading man. He’d also like to be famous for more than his […]



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