Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Journey to the Center of Life

Gen: Perjalanan Menuju Pusat Kehidupan by Siddharta Mukherjee; Damaring Tyas W Palar

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Another (daft) reading challenge! A few years back I took the best part of 8 months to read through an Indonesian translation of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer  (Kanker Biografi Suatu Penyakit.) I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue with the rest of the translations of Mukherjee’s books. But Google Play was nothing but persistent.  So there we have it; it was a little less laborious this time, but I have managed to make my way though the translation […]

Folktales and cycles through history

Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai

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Songs for Ghosts fulfills the “culture” square on CBR17 Bingo. Songs for Ghosts is a beautiful, tragic story of the power of stories and love, as well as the way past choices can create cycles throughout time. I’m unfamiliar with it, but in the afterword the author talks about Songs for Ghosts being a retelling of Madama Butterfly opera by Puccini where Cio-Cio-San has more agency than just the reductive submissive wife trope. Adam is a seventeen year old whose boyfriend just broke up with […]

Quite a Grab Bag

Waiting for the Fear by Oguz Atay

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cbr17bingo Black A collection of stories from an unusual author, a Turkish writer who lived from 1934 to 1977.  Some of them are fables, some are mystical, and a few are more realistic.  For me, some resonated, and some were impenetrable.  And a few had a sly sense of humor. Like Not Yes Not No, which cracked me up.  A young man gets a job answering letters to a paper asking for personal advice (think Dear Abby).  M.C. writes in to state he has written […]

Expansion of Serpent Lore

Mad Ship by Robin Hobb

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cbr17bingo: green  This book took me on an emotional ride that was worth every moment. We continue to spend time with the same characters as the first book—the Vestrit and Haven families, Kennit, and Brashen—plus one of the Rain Wilders and a Companion of the Satrap. We also get more time with Amber and Paragon, which I loved. The characters are adjusting to the new and evolving situations in which they find themselves. Malta remained intensely frustrating for a large chunk of the book, as […]

Anarchy in the UK

Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey

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CBR Bingo: ‘O’ I bought Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey a few months ago, essentially on a whim (I liked the title and the cover). I’d vaguely heard of the author (he wrote The Girl with All the Gifts, a book/movie that has been recommended to me before, but that I’ve never actually gotten around to reading/watching yet), but I was basically going in blind. I picked it up recently because it’s a short standalone novel, which I like to read to break up bigger […]

When your abandoned lighthouse is not so abandoned after all

The Ghost of Wreckers Cove by Angelica Del Campo, Christian Argiz and Liniers

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Cbr17bingo G (G is for Ghost) When I find a book from Papercutz I usually have an extreme I really like this or I really don’t. Now, granted The Ghost of Wreckers Cove by Angelica Del Campo, Christian Argiz and Liniers (illustrator) had a few bumps as I am an adult reader who has to remember sometimes you need to suspend your “reality need” for the sake of a good story.  I was debating if I wanted to read this graphic novel as it looked […]



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