Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About GentleRain

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Your jack of all trades eccentric. Knows a little about a lot and a lot about a little. Tends to mainly read non-fiction (history, true crime, old gossip, etc), SF/F, horror, graphic novels, "genre" books. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: GentleRain's Quick Questions interview.)

GentleRain's Reviews:

“When you get older, you may never have anyone sing to you personally again, but go all over the world and I bet you can’t find one baby that has never been sung to.”

The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry

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Lynda Barry’s other near-perfect YA novel, The Good Times Are Killing Me, marks my completing re-reading her non comics work, as I read and reviewed Cruddy last year. I do think Cruddy is a singular work of genius, but this novel is a close second and one that I find deeply moving and beautiful. It’s a short book, only 131 pages, but Barry manages to pack a lot of emotion and layered, thoughtful commentary on growing up, friendship, systemic societal racism, and the power of […]

“We can only keep moving forward and try our best to make reparations to the little world we live in.”

Looking For Her by Chan Chau

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This was a fun preorder gift to myself — I completely forgot that I’d ordered this so it was a nice surprise package when I got home one day. Chan Chau is one of my favorite artists and I’m glad I got the chance to have a physical copy of this comic. You can also currently read it for free online but there’s something very satisfying about the physical package and slotting it in place on the shelf. Also I now never have to worry […]

“Photojournalists were swept along by the firestorms of change:” A Look at 1989 by the NPPA

The Best of Photojournalism Vol.15 by presented by The National Press Photographers Association and The University of Missouri School of Journalism

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I love photojournalism a lot and so have collected the majority of this series. These books came out from the mid 1970s until the early 2000s, and the Best of Photojournalism contest still goes on although they seem not to do the physical books anymore. This 15th volume covers the 1989 competition, which was a very strong year in terms of world events — the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Tienanmen Square protests and massacre, the overthrow of Ceausescu, etc. The book is split […]

A Terribly Sad Book That Probably Shouldn’t Have Been Written at This Point in Time

Spare by Prince Harry

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Honestly, where to begin with this one considering the amount of ink already spilled about it and the endless interviews. I am coming at this from the point of view of someone most interested in pre-WWI royalty, and as someone who is interested in the generational reverberations of child abuse. I am not that invested in who is right in the current generational struggle or really in any of the individuals in this book, and I tried to approach my reading with a fairly open […]

“I know you cannot be swept away from sanity by a popular movement which has so much that is bad about it, no matter how strong it may be.”

Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressman Taylor

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A very slim but powerful read that I really enjoyed. This was a Christmas gift/recommendation from my mom, and I’m glad she did gift it to me, as it’s right up my alley of related interests. This book especially struck me because it was published before the war began in 1938, but it is so prescient and clear minded about the moral and physical dangers of the rising fascism in Germany. It has that timeless air to it of a book that saw the future […]

“Life is priceless…but life has a cost:” A Look at the Vietnam War Through the Eyes of One Family

Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63 by Marcelino Truong

Saigon Calling: London 1963-75 by Marcelino Truong

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I’d been eyeing this series for several years and finally asked for them for atheist Christmas (the present-focused non-religious version my parents decided to bequeath us). I enjoyed these and they’re definitely worth reading, but they were more removed and distant feeling than I thought they’d be. The first volume follows Truong’s family as they move to South Vietnam for his father to become Prime Minister Diem’s translator. His French mother buckles under the strain of living in the midst of an escalating war, and […]



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