Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Except Not So Happy

Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima

by Leave a Comment

The narrator, a young woman whose name we never know, is in a dissolving marriage.  Her husband needs to leave, for unknown reasons.  Perhaps he just needs his own space.  She is not terribly fussed about the situation.  But he feels it incumbent upon himself to find her a new apartment.  Nothing in her price range fits though, and so she finally goes her own way, three year old daughter in tow, and finds her own place without mentioning it to him. This is her […]

Yellowface: what a wild ride

Yellowface by RF Kuang

by 2 Comments

mood music: t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l – willow smith This book was a wild ride. I had a very love-hate relationship with it, and it took time to finish because of this. A social commentary about the literary publishing world, it tackles issues with diversity and inclusivity and how minority writers are boxed into specific genres by their publishing companies in service of diversifying the signed authors. The story follows June Haywayd, a young […]

Fall into the sea with Mina

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh

by 2 Comments

I discovered The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea last year, when I was searching for a read that would evoke similar feelings to a Studio Ghibli movie – and this book did not disappoint! Axie Oh’s retelling of the Korean folk tale “The Tale of Shim Ch’ŏng” delivered on its description as a feminist retelling. The heroine was strong, determined, and spoke for herself, without being overshadowed by the powerful male characters who accompanied her journey through the Spirit Realm. Mina is a young […]

Underwhelmed (or I wanted to like this but . . . )

Red Thread of Fate by Lyn Liao Butler

by Leave a Comment

I am part of a book club that creates a yearly reading list of interesting titles (we all suggest and then vote on 9) and usually the book is a good choice—even if it is something I might not have picked up otherwise. I wanted to like Lyn Lia Butler’s book, Red Thread of Fate, both because it was picked by one of my book club colleagues and because on paper, the story is an interesting one. New Yorkers, Tam and her husband, Tony, are […]

“For whom the wedding bells toll”

Sofia Khan is Not Obliged (2015) by Ayisha Malik

by 4 Comments

I wrote a review of Dorothy B. Hughes’s bleak noir novel Ride the Pink Horse (1946) as part of my Bingo this year, and said something about how it implodes comforting myths, and Emmalita commented, which was lovely, about how she came back to romance because sometimes people need escape from noir and need comforting myths (I paraphrase). I chewed this over in my head for a few weeks, and ended up digging out an unread romance novel I bought a while back, Sofia Khan […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo