Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Sweeter and lighter than I was expecting

If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

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CBR 17 BINGO: “I” (for “If”) Translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland A young Japanese postman learns he has a terminal illness and has very little time left to live (months? weeks?). Estranged from his father, the postman lives alone with his cat Cabbage and can’t even come up with a decent bucket list to tackle in his remaining time on Earth. He’s feeling sort of pathetic when the devil appears to him with a bad news/good news scenario: If what the devil says […]

“Which is harder: devising an unsolvable problem, or solving that problem?”

The Devotion of Suspect X (Detective Galileo, #1) by Keigo Higashino

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I feel like this author and I are just jamming together on the same vibe. I’ve seen other people’s reviews and YouTube reactions/book club live shows and my reactions are so different to theirs. I really feel like I just fall into this author’s worlds and just let him shamelessly manipulate me exactly the way he wants and it’s hard for me to imagine not being enthralled by what’s happening. They’re all like ‘meh,’ and I’m like what are you talking about?!??? This particular tome […]

Running Writer Contemplates Stuff

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

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Bingo 2: Asia & Oceania I’ve read a few of Haruki Murakami’s novels (in translation; I don’t read Japanese); I enjoyed them but they’re definitely something you need to be in the right mood for. His non-fiction What I Talk About When I Talk About Running sounds exactly like the kind of guy who would write some of those stories, at least style-wise. Murakami is a long-time distance runner as the title suggests, and basically he’s turned bits of his running journal into a nine […]

Creatively murdering people for the money. #CBRBINGO – Dough

The Inugami Curse (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #2) by Seishi Yokomizo

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These books continue to be really good mysteries, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to give one five stars because they’re so dated. Homophobia in this one in particular is a big issue. Fun fact: Apparently the image on the cover of this edition is fairly pervasive in Japanese culture, the way that Marilyn Monroe standing above the subway grate in her white dress is for Americans. This Seishi Yokomizo guy was KIND OF a big deal. (This book is I think his […]

Too much damage

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

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Osamu Dazai is an esteemed author of classical Japanese literature, but he was a troubled man in real life.  Like a lot of classical Western authors, he squandered his money on alcohol and prostitutes, and ultimately, died by suicide at a relatively young age.  The tortured genius thing is not just a Western trope, I guess. This book, his last before his death, is purported to be fiction, but is almost biographical in how the beats of the story reflect his real life.  So maybe […]

This whole book is one big WTF moment.

Confessions by Kanae Minato

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If you would like to read something absolutely wild, go ahead and pick up this book. I knew it was going to be dark going in, and maybe it’s just because I don’t read all that many books that could truly be described as “dark,” but this was DARK. But also, it somehow managed to avoid being bleak? I think it was because it was so audacious. I just kept thinking the whole time I was reading it, WHAT. SHE DID WHAT NOW. (She being […]



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