Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Building bridges

The Paper Bridge by Joelle Veyrenc and Seng Soun Ratanavanh

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One morning I opened my emails to find a Floris Books email saying I was a winner from the Grabbing a Galley from the Publishers Weekly campaign and there was an online link that was in the email. It hadn’t been that long since I had entered, but I had forgotten the titles I had hoped for. Therefore it was Christmas and I was opening the book present I always love getting. This one was the picture book, The Paper Bridge created by Joelle Veyrenc, […]

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 […]

“Friendship is a contract between two hearts. With hearts united, women can laugh and cry, live and die together.”

Lady Tan's Circle of Women by Lisa See

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My local library has us go around in a circle and sum up the book in one word (Or a few words, I mean, they aren’t strict about it and sometimes one word just won’t do!) and my word for this one was “unrelenting” because I found it to be one of the toughest reads I’ve gone through in a while. That’s not to say it isn’t a good book, it is but, it’s about being a woman in China in the 1400s so there […]

Politics, Economy and Gender of Gaming

In Real Life by Cory Doctorow

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My review of In Real Life by Cory Doctorow has borrowed pieces from a couple online reviewers. I figured they said what I was feeling, and it’s validating to know I wasn’t the only one that wasn’t “wowed” but the book, yet still found enjoyment. I will start  with: This is not a perfect story, still, I had… fun reading it. The online world vs real world has been done before.  You can … connect on a virtual level, but it can’t replace human (…) […]

Produce the produce

Grandma’s Roof Garden by Tang Wei

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I have been reading several intense books lately. Therefore I decided that I needed to cleanse the palette. And what better way to do that but with food and books. Then I found Grandma’s Roof Garden. As I munched my Hemingwing (a chicken sandwich with goat cheese, some funky herbal mayo, and onion jam) I read this book by Tang Wei and translated by Kelly Zhang. Though it is currently available, I read it via an online reader copy. I might find a few physical […]

The Fox Warrior in us all

The Fox Maidens by Robin Ha

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I started The Fox Maidens by Robin Ha as an online reader. However, it was only a sample of about half of the graphic novel. I was both “OH! Now what????” and  “Eh…I get the idea…do I go on?” I decided to go on and asked at my local library for a copy. It took a bit, but it was mostly worth the wait. Ha is the delightful author of Almost American Girl: An Illustrated Memoir. And though The Fox Maidens is fiction, I expected […]



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