Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About vega-table

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Seattle area hermit, staying in with my video games, books, cats, and beer. Living the dream.

vega-table's Reviews:

This book ruined my productivity

Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen

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Bingo Row 5 – arts What if Harriet Tubman somehow came back from the past to the modern world? What would she do? Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen says that Harriet Tubman would be the MC in a hip-hop band with some people she led to freedom and a stoned Benjamin Lay. The book is told in the first person by Darnell, Harriet Tubman’s producer. He works with Harriet to put her stories to music. They gossip about Frederick Douglass […]

That sure was a book

Ordinary Monsters by Miro, JM

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Bingo Row 1 – Black Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro feels nostalgic. I suspect a lot of that is because the book looks so much like my long gone copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It’s a big black book with the silhouette of a flying bird on the cover. I only noticed it in a bookstore because I thought it was Jonathan Strange. There are a few other similarities I noticed between the two, but it’s been so long since I read the […]

Personally timely

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

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Bingo Row 3 – I The first thing I noticed about Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao was that the book was dedicated to Rebecca Schaeffer. That set a strong tone for the book. It indicated that the author felt some strong connection with a long dead actress whose death influenced stalking laws, and it indicated that the topics would be about how society and men treat women and celebrities. It turns out the book was dedicated to a different Rebecca Schaeffer than the one […]

Some Jesus Allegory or Another

Fruits Basket Collector's Edition, vols. 1-12 by Takaya, Natsuki

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Bingo row 4 – family Dostoevsky’s the Idiot is a novel about someone who is so kind and good that everyone assumes he’s an idiot. Prince Lev is a “modern” day Jesus, unappreciated and destroyed by the times. This review isn’t about that book, but I thought about it a lot as I read Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya. (I had previously watched its anime adaptation, so The Idiot connection was brewing and boiling when I started reading. It’s also not a unique comparison.) Tohru […]

This isn’t a Dr. Faustus-Frankenstein crossover, but that’s a good thing

Chicano Frankenstein by Olivas, Daniel A

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Bingo Row 4 – Green I’ve been meaning to read Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel A Olivas for one reason. The title is Chicano Frankenstein, which I find intriguing. It’s a modern retelling of Frankenstein, making it a post modern Prometheus. (I made myself laugh). But really it doesn’t have many parallels with the inspiration because the protagonists are nice and reasonable. In a world where corpses are reanimated for labor or something, some reanimated man just lives his life as politics and human rights issues […]

Savage Appetites

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Monroe, Rachel

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Bingo Row 5 – borrow I got it from the library. Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe opens and closes with a rich lady from Chicago. Although one was heiress rich and wanted crimes to be solved and the other was horse riding lessons rich and wanted to be a famous mass shooter; they weren’t really in the same social bracket or true crime fangirl bracket. But I thought they made good bookends. I always enjoy things about […]



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