Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Do they like Ray Charles, Elton John or Liberace?

The Elephant and the Piano by Colette Hiller

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As 2025 winds down, I am finding more online reader copies for 2026. And not just for January or February. No, I’ve seen as late as July 2026. Thankfully The Elephant and the Piano is an early one as it’s due in May 2026. Until then (when I will be finding finished copies for gifts and the library), I will just read Colette Hiller’s book online. This book is based on actual events (but takes some poetic license) of how one man decided to help […]

Around the World Around the World

Night Prayers by Santiago Gamboa

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Very mixed feelings on Night Prayers. Ultimately, it’s one of the best things I’ve read in 2025. It’s also one of the more frustrating. Gamboa writes in the style of his Latin American contemporaries such as Bolaño and Marquez. And for the most part, he does it well. This is a style I always enjoy sampling, even if it can frustrate me at times with its tangents and magic realism. I quit the book several times in the beginning but was inexorably drawn back to it and […]

Yeah, I’d read it again

Continental Drifter by Kathy MacLeod

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Honestly, there are not many surprises in Continental Drifter by Kathy MacLeod. Granted, there might be a few “oh didn’t expect that to go exactly that way,” but for the most part, you know where our narrator is going and how things will probably turn out. Yet, it is an enjoyable read for the adult reader and the pre-teen/early teen will experience it new. We follow Kathy’s (based on the author’s own experiences) story as family, friendship and belonging all come together. This makes a […]

Three friends, a revolution, and (for me) a look at our literary biases

Good True Thai by Sunisa Manning

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Last year came and went with the stillness of a thrashing fish out of water — I certainly don’t need to recap what an astoundingly not-normal year 2020 was. We were all just doing our best, gasping for air while picking up new hobbies to distract ourselves from the pandemic, racial injustice, the world ending, etc. And this is where I let you non-Asia readers in on a secret: While the US and Europe played cat-and-mouse with the virus (seriously, does anyone really know what […]

A city whose fate can change as suddenly as the monsoon rain

Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

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From the very first pages describing Bangkok’s early evening crowd of school children, food vendors and no-shits-given receptionist that a character encounters as she walks into a condo building, I knew I was in for the real thing. Literally, Pitchaya Sudbanthad could have been describing my walk home after work. It’s even the details in the condo’s lobby that he gets right, like the random coffee venture that pops up to please management or the “pre-fabricated panels of exposed brick” and the trendy Scandi-but-really-Thai-imitation furniture […]

Mindfreak Mystery

Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett

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First things first: all my caveats about this series from my review of Bangkok Tattoo still apply (book is written as the perspective of an easterner by a westerner). Everything in this series needs to be taken with that grain of salt. Still…wow. This book messed with my mind. In each of these tales, Burdett reaches for a complex plot, weaving in Buddhist theology and observations about life in Thailand and the eastern Pacific rim in general. Here, you could see a writer who is completely comfortable […]



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