Cannon named one of NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour’s Favourite Books of 2025!

"Oh, yeah. So this is Cannon by Lee Lai. I feel like every year there's a graphic novel that I get, like, a review copy in the mail, and then I just, like, sit criss-cross-applesauce on my floor and start peeking through it. And then two hours pass. My legs are numb. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. And, like, I'm an emotional wreck. And that book this year is Cannon. The titular character, Cannon, is, like, a cook, right, working at a mid-tier restaurant, taking care of an ailing patriarch. And, you know, she's just got a lot on her plate. And she vents about all of this to her best friend. Her best friend is an aspiring and struggling writer who ends up using some of the material from Cannon's life into her own work. And this sort of causes a rift between them. And it's a cute and intimate and deep story about this friendship that kind of cracks apart, while also dealing with questions of identity and identity politics in a very interesting and head-on way, right? The best-friend character who's a writer, you know, she's being pushed in all of these identitarian boxes when, you know, she's just like, I don't know if any of that really fits my steez, right? And so she has to, like, navigate that with her agent. And meanwhile, Cannon is dealing with all of these things that supersede identitarian questions, like someone who is dying, someone who is sick and, like paying rent, and a boss who kind of sucks. And it's a really interesting and deep slice-of-life graphic novel. And so that is the book Cannon by Lee Lai."