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:

Longtime small time fan reads, enjoys musician’s biography

Space is the Place by Szwed, John

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Sun Ra denies being born because being birthed is to ‘be earthed’, or buried. And if you’re buried, you’re dead, so he was not born. On the other hand, his sister said he was born in Alabama at his aunt’s house (by a train station). And so begins John Szwed’s biography of the musician Sun Ra, Space is the Place. The biography was mostly facts. Sun Ra said this, John Szwed found out something else and put the two narratives side by side so the […]

Read for the translator, stay for the spaceship description

Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang

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I like Ken Liu’s own writing, but I love his translations. So when Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang came out about a year ago, I bought it, read the translator’s notes immediately, read the notes to my politely smiling husband, then shelved the book for a later time. The time has come. My knowledge of China is piecemealy and Jumpnauts assumes that the reader has a better understanding of the country and its history than I do – which makes sense since the book and its […]

From the creator of Ranma…. It’s Inuyasha!

Inuyasha, vol 1-18 (vizbig) by Rumiko Takahashi

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20ish years ago, a cousin gave me the first volume of the Inuyasha manga because it was “just like” Ranma ½, which I loved. I found it was almost nothing like Ranma and the cousin admitted that even though the two series were both by Rumiko Takahashi, they didn’t actually have much in common (that I was interested in). No one would ever get hit on the head with a fowl training potty in Inuyasha. I’d never see a yeti riding a bull while holding […]

Not bad, not good

A court of thorns and roses by Sarah Maas

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The book challenge – read some romance. The other book challenge – read something banned. All I knew about A Court of Thorns and Roses is that it is a romance, highly banned, and book snobs hate it. Presumably because of TikTok and sexism. All that is good enough for me.   Feyre is basically a hunter Cinderella for her hilariously awful family. But then she accidentally kills a faerie and another faerie, Tamlin, takes her to the faerie land to be given kisses and […]

You are already dead – IYKYK and now I know

Fist of the North Star, vol. 1-14 by Buronson, Tetsuo Hara

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This is for vols 1-14, which is all my library has, although I did request vol. 15. My draw to the Fist of the North Star manga series was mostly that RGG/Sega made a video game of it and they made the Yakuza games. Written in the 80s and set in the Mad Max 1990s, the story is about Kenshiro wandering the post nuclear war wasteland pouting and blowing people up. Sometimes he has allies; always he has enemies; probably he has a plot. But […]

So good, so far

So Far So Good by Ursula K LeGuin

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I’ve never really gotten poetry or Ursula K LeGuin. I have nothing against either, they just weren’t for me… until So Far So Good, LeGuin’s last work. I knew signing up for a reading challenge would take me outside of my reading comfort zone, which is fine. Outside of my comfort zone is rarely uncomfortable (with reading). The worst is usually just uninteresting, the best is a bigger comfort zone. The challenge (storygraph’s 2025 genre challenge) was a nature poetry collection and I have enough […]



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