Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I’m fine with being a half kid, but now I don’t even know which half I’m supposed to be.”

The Squad by Christina Soontornvat and Joanna Cacao

by Leave a Comment

The Squad is a sequel to The Tryout, which dealt with Christina trying out for the cheerleading squad in her small Texas town. Her mother is white and her father is Thai, and Christina is one of the few Asian American people in the town, which leads to bullying and a persistent sense of being different. She struggles with being mixed race and the idea that she’s just half of As The Squad opens, Christina is starting eighth grade and is feeling confident and good about […]

“When we were growing up, our parents wouldn’t buy us things, so we worked hard and now we can: buy all volumes of manga, buy toys in bulk, buy DVD box sets”

Insufficient Direction by Moyoco Anno

by Leave a Comment

Insufficient Direction is a humorous autobiographical manga by Moyoco Anno, the wife of Hideaki Anno, who direction Neon Genesis Evangelion. Moyoco is a manga artist and this book chronicles their life together. The main theme is that Hideaki is a huge otaku and Moyoco is trying to remain normal but keeps getting sucked deeper and deeper into an otaku lifestyle. It’s interesting reading this from the 2024 viewpoint of the nerds having taken over the earth and casting my mind back to when being a nerd […]

Racism is a very real thing, even in Norway

Kvit, norsk mann (White Norwegian man) by Brynjulf Jung Tjønn

by Leave a Comment

Nowhere Bingo 2025: A poetry collection The author of this poetry collection was adopted from South Korea by a childless Norwegian couple when he was three years old. Throughout this rather short, but very impactful poetry collection, he writes about his constant feeling of exclusion and lack of belonging. As a child of Asian descent in a small western Norwegian village surrounded by white people, he obviously stood out among the other children. Adopted by farmers to take over their farm when they grew old, […]

Sound financial advice from your favorite Punk Rock Girl

I Survived Capitalism and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Madeline Pendleton

by Leave a Comment

Like any other day, I was scrolling through TikTok, watching dog rescue videos and clips of that lumberjack with the tattoos. This punk rock girl with blue hair and safety pin earrings came across my screen. She was talking about how everyone at her business makes the same thing, even her. I was very intrigued. It was an immediate follow. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRc7SCwp/ Her name is Madeline Pendleton. She is the founder and owner of Tunnel Vision, a website offering a line of really cute punk/emo friendly […]

A Great Collection of Autobio Comics!

Little Tunny's Snail Diaries by Grace Gogarty

by Leave a Comment

I really love Grace Gogarty’s work and so was thrilled when I saw this collection of autobio comics available for preorder. I hopped right on that and then forgot about it until I got the shipping notice, which was another delightful surprise. I am fully on board with using book preorders as a little gift for myself in the future, it cheers up a rough day. Little Tunny’s Snail Diaries collects a variety of Gogarty’s autobio comics in a really nice edition. The format mimics […]

Two Very Different But Sweet Autobiographical Manga

The Bride Was A Boy by Chii

Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu by Junji Ito

by Leave a Comment

The breadth of non-fiction manga is on full display between these two very different books! The Bride was a Boy is a memoir about a trans woman’s experience falling in love and getting married. It’s also a basic primer on what being transgender is like  and a good overview on the Japanese government’s policies on trans people. I know there are enormous problems in the US right now vis a vis trans rights, which terrifies me every day as a trans person, but I’m always glad we […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo