Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


About Merryn

CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant
CBR14 Bingo Badges
CBR15 Participant
CBR17 Participant

Read more. Write more.

Merryn's Reviews:

“History, rolled, reshaped, undone and mauled”

Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

by Leave a Comment

CBRBingo: Uncannon (And card full!) Carpentaria is a powerful novel by Waanyi woman, Alexis Wright, set in the fictional town of Desperance on Australia’s remote tropical Gulf of Carpentaria.  It’s a challenging read, with densely beautiful passages of description and distant omniscient narrative that takes sudden dives down into the dirt of this troubled town and its messy inhabitants.  It took me a while to find its rhythm, but then I was hooked. This is a story about a family.  Norm Phantom, who “the Pricklebush […]

Toss a coin to your witcher

The Last Wish by Andzrej Sapkowski

by Leave a Comment

CBRBingo: Old series I’m a latecomer to Andzrej Sapkowski’s Witcher series, drawn in by the Netflix series and thoroughly earwormed by its ridiculously awesome theme song. I loved the series and was looking to learn more about Geralt of Rivia, Ciri, Yenifer, the Continent and its complex backstory of magic and political intrigue. I certainly learned some more about Geralt, the focus of this linked collection of short stories that tell of his work as a Witcher, a magic-shaped hunter, deperately needed by villages, towns and […]

“Forgetting their childhoods had been essential for their survival, but it came at a cost.”

With My LIttle Eye by Sandra Hogan

by Leave a Comment

CBRBingo:  Reader’s Choice subbing in for Rep I first heard about this book from a newspaper article with a heading about spies in the suburbs, and was tantalised by the idea of a family of spies living in the same leafy, sleepy suburb of Brisbane as me.  I then heard an engaging radio interview  with Sue Ellen Doherty that focused on the hijinks of her and her siblings tagging along with their dad as he cultivated his network of informants, and monitored the activities of […]

“We’re not meant to all survive, anyway. The school had to be fed somehow.”

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

by 2 Comments

CBRBingo: New Series, Pandemic I loved A Deadly Education so much I preordered The Last Graduate so I could read it on the Australian release day.  Luckily for me I had only a few days to wait. The Scholomance is such a great setting.  A school without teachers, created to keep young magicians safe from the magical creatures that can’t resist the lure of people old enough to be full of tasty mana, but too inexperienced to properly defend themselves yet. A school that is […]

“Once we’re seen … we want to be remembered”

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

by 7 Comments

CBRBingo: Rec’d This book was not recommended to me by any one Cannonballer, but by the collective.  I was intrigued when I read the 2020 book club discussion post – a book so loved by Cannonballers it was being revisited, and also coincidentally resonant with the then new pandemic.  As the reviews came in I checked them out, and also looked back to the 2015 batch. Emmalita described it as a story of loss, meaning and human connection. MarkAbaddon spoke of resilience and our collective […]

What unspeakable truth is being covered up by stories of ghosts?

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley

by Leave a Comment

CBRBingo: Fauna – moths and Katsu, who somehow survived. In her sequel to The Watchmaker of Filligree Street Natash Pulley takes the story to Japan.  Thaniel has been sent by the Foreign Office to investigate stories of ghosts at the British legation.  His boss Fanshaw thinks that someone at the legation might be abusing their power over the local staff and an outsider who speaks the language and knows something of the culture might be able to get to the bottom of what’s really going on.  And […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo