Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“You can’t protect what’s precious to you through violence” … unless there’s a bargain sale involved

The Way of the Househusband vol. 1 by Kousuke Oono

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CBR14Bingo – Funky: I can’t think of much funkier than a former yakuza gangster applying the same energy to bargain hunting as offing people. And, it’s my first BINGO! I’d heard wonderful things about this manga, so when I saw it was finally available at my library, well, I jumped on it. It’s a hilarious collection of loosely connected slice-of-life stories from a yakuza who’s traded turf battles for bargain sales. Tatsu has retired from being the infamous “Immortal Dragon” of the yakuza underworld to become […]

Peace like a river flows

Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer by Richard Rhodes

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Bingo category – Mind Farm is the accounting of a year on a family farm in central Missouri.  Tom, Sally, and their children raise corn, soybeans, and hogs on this farm, which is actually a patchwork of smaller farms.  The year is mid-1980s, so there are the Reagan/Clinton farm policies to be dealt with, as well as issues such as how the land can be plowed, what to do about storage if there isn’t enough, and the ever temperamental weather situation.  The fact is that […]

World Cold and Hard, Legends & Lattes Soft and Warm

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

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There’s something delightful about a story with low stakes. So often stories set in fantasy worlds have so much at stake that the quiet moments can be lost, the fates of the kingdom or the world taking over. Legends & Lattes is all about the quiet moments, of the therapeutic joy of brewing a cup of coffee. It’s also about the joy of making something with people you care about, and dare I say it, of chosen family. Not that the last part is super […]

Transition Can Save Your Life, But It Won’t Fix It By Itself

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

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Nevada found me at an interesting point in my life. I find myself at a midpoint between the two protagonists, Maria and James, looking forwards and back at them and wondering how I relate to them and how they would relate to me. Maria is a trans woman, living in New York and finding herself without direction. Transition has made her the woman she is today, but on the heels of a breakup with her longterm girlfriend, she’s not really sure who that is anymore. […]

A sip of cozy

Small Hours: A Mrs. Frollein Collection by Valerie Minelli

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cbr14bingo Cozy Level 2 Mrs. Frollein is a woman who has a few bad days, a few good days, and days where she shows her husband(?) her “full moon” as a (adorable) joke. Because she is adorable (even when she toots), she eats, sleeps, deals with every day and beside her is her partner. Small Hours: A Mrs. Frollein Collection collected several of the webcomics and broke them down into the four seasons of the year. There was also (at the time) several never seen […]

Komi is Learning but What about Everyone Else?

Komi Can't Communicate, vol. 11 by Tomohito Oda

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My kind of mindless yet entertaining read has recently been the Komi Can’t Communicate manga. The interesting thing is that until now, this series told as a bunch of loosely connected mini-episodes has so far managed to stay interesting. It took until volume eleven for things to get a little shaky. I still like Komi, and she’s making steady progress as a character. She actually speaks a few complete sentences to different people here, out loud. The romance angle is obvious and a little pointless […]



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