Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Appetizing

Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods by Grace Lin

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Officially I have not finished Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods by Grace Lin. Not because it is a bad book, or because it is a hard read, but because it is actually a good collection of stories that you need to take your  time with. Lin takes myths, legends, some truths, historical facts and creative license and tells us the story of the menu of Chinese culture. I have only gotten  little over half way through, but want to […]

Who says you can’t learn something new?

The Fishwife Cookbook by Becca Millstein & Vilda Gonzalez

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My nuclear family was not a tinned fish family aside from the ubiquitous canned tuna fish. My mom grew up on the Gulf Coast of Texas and loved fishing and crabbing, so we frequently had fresh fish on the table for dinner. It wasn’t until I got to grad school that I met people who bought tinned fish other than tuna. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t really know what to do with it on my own. I was attracted to The Fishwife Cookbook by […]

“Dad? Mom? I think I can do it.” (Do what?) “Save the world?” or Don’t touch the cute space robot on the weird planet in the first place

Blake Laser by Keith Marantz

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Blake Laser is a fun story for the lover of science-fiction, love of a little fantasy, of course aliens and just the right amount of humor. Everything is a bit face paced, but is not crowded with text, too many images or action. This story by Keith Marantz has a biracial family of four, that are heading where no human has gone before! No, not space (it is the 24th century after all, been there done that!) but a particular place in space. The family […]

Choose Your Own Adventure for the younger crowd

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Ghost on the Mountain (Dragonlarks) by Kyandreia Jones

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I don’t know about you, but I used to enjoy the Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid/pre-teen. They were easy and even back then I liked that quick read. That mystery of where your choice would take you. Now they were not my main genre for reading and I moved onto other books, but I always held a small space in my heart for them. And as a bookseller I found them again, but again, I don’t need to read. But I found […]

Pablo probably wishes he was the one stuffed in his locker

Monster Locker Volume 1 by Jorge Aguirre

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Currently available (but I read via an online reader copy), Monster Locker Volume 1 is a fun book that is a bit predictable for adults, but for at least 8 and up (more 10 to 13 perhaps) this is going to be a neat adventure. A mostly diverse cast of characters allows us to see a family following traditions but also forgetting its past. Then magic happens (cue a magic cell phone, a typical kid, and some ancient goddesses) and chaos happens. This is all […]

From Child to Political Prisoner

The Boy from Clearwater Book One by Yu Pei-Yun

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The Boy from Clearwater Book One by Yu Pei-Yun, illustrated by Zhou Jian-Xin and translated by Lin King is a memoir that leans towards the poetic. The showing of things  could have been more graphic (as there were beatings, execution, etc), but is not necessarily lacking as you understand what is happening. The two parts (the early years before 1950 and then the ten years after 1950) are nicely split up, allowing for the colors pink, blue along with black and white, to play their […]



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