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:

A Childhood Favorite Becomes a Complicated Re-Read As An Adult.

Tintin Volumes 3-23 by Hergé

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This is another review where I’m unable to be unbiased because these are the ultimate nostalgia reads for me. I read these obsessively until the covers fell off when I was little. It had been a long time (15 years +) since I’d revisited them, so I asked for the complete set for Christmas to round out my library. I got the full-sized albums, not the ones where they jammed four volumes into half-sized books. Hergé’s art is worth reading at full size so you […]

Sweet Queer Supernatural Romance

Match With the Demon by Chace Verity

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I saw Emmalita’s positive review of this and decided to pick it up — I’d never read anything by Chace Verity and it’s been a while since I read any romance outside of fanfic, so this was a bit of a random read. But it was very sweet and cozy, which is the type of book I was in the mood for. I breezed through it and enjoyed it. Match With the Demon follows Harrison, a single dad whose son Justin just left for college. Harrison […]

“The tastes she wanted me to remember. The feelings she never wanted me to forget.”

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

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I read this in an emotionally complicated state, which probably fits with the emotional complexity of the book itself. My mom got me this for Christmas, and then I finished it today after she let me know she’d fainted and was in the emergency room. So reading a book about a mother dying when I wasn’t sure what was going on with my own mom was a recipe for some stressful reading. (My mom is probably fine, by the way, I don’t think she’s in […]

“I think of all the things I dislike in this world, I hate being condescended to the most:” A Lovely Coming of Age YA Novel

Marly the Kid by Susan Beth Pfeffer

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This was a very pleasant surprise — I got this randomly based on a TikTok recommendation, and had no real expectations going in. I thought the plot sounded interesting and I tend to like older YA from the 70s, so figured I’d give it a shot. It turned out to be quite good and I really enjoyed it. Marly is a sophomore in high school whose mother is awful and verbally abusive to her. Her sister already left home and is in Colorado trying to […]

An Informative Memoir by the King of Clowns

Grock: King of Clowns by Grock

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This was a pleasant read and Grock was a cheerful raconteur of his interesting life story. Grock was one of the most famous performers of his day, but as he himself writes, “Clowns too are soon forgotten.” I think the fact that clowning is an art best experienced live, combined with it not usually being recorded for posterity, leads to the progressive cultural memory loss of people like Grock, except by those with an intense knowledge of the field (there are videos of him that […]

“This dreadful silence we called peace.”

A Father's Story by Lionel Dahmer

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I continued my reading on the Jeffrey Dahmer serial murders with this personal memoir of the case by his father Lionel. The issue lying before me is writing a review where I feel awful for everyone involved and also relate a lot without sounding either hard-hearted, overly forgiving, or like I myself am headed down some dark road. And also to avoid making it sound like I think that my own theories about the case psychology are necessarily correct vs what experts think. True crime […]



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