Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Turns out, she’s still a genius

Turns out, I'm fine by Judith Lucy

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Last year, Judith Lucy was overwhelmed and dying (according to the name of her podcast) but in 2021 it turns out, she’s fine. Which I am supremely happy to hear, because she’s been one of my favourite comedians since the 90s, not long after she first hit Australia’s scene. This is Lucy’s memoir of a pretty shitty series of life events that she wrangles, as always, into great material. With this book however she goes a bit further in trying sort out life’s shit and […]

Great book; awful characters

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

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This novel, winner of a few ‘best book’ prizes in 2009, is a contemporaneous picture of middle class suburban Australia, full of desperately unlike-able characters. I was impressed at how the author managed to make me feel at once completely at home with the setting and the average-ness of the characters’ lives while at the same time feeling lucky that I wasn’t related to or friends with anyone remotely like any of them. Despite the awful characters, or maybe because of them, I actually really […]

A history of Australia that’s far from dry

Intoxicating: Ten drinks that shaped Australia by Max Allen

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There is a widespread myth that Australia’s Indigenous peoples were introduced to alcohol by European settlers, and were susceptible to drinking a lot of it because they’d never had it before. The first chapter of this fascinating book blows that myth away with descriptions of fermented gum tree sap and how it had been used long before the arrival of rum and wine. This is both a really good book about alcoholic drinks and about history. The author, a journalist and wine writer, goes to […]

I can only suspend my disbelief until my imaginary parachute fails

All Our Shimmering Skies by Trent Dalton

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Molly Hook is a gravedigger’s daughter stuck in a pretty miserable existence in Darwin, 1942, as the Japanese bombs start raining from the sky. After losing her mum at a very young age, she spends her days digging up graves for her father and uncle’s nefarious purposes, kept company by her friend Bert the shovel. She longs to solve the puzzle of the curse placed on her grandfather and which has plagued multiple generations of her family since. To do this she needs to go […]

The genius behind the clown

Reckoning by Magda Szubanski

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Another of my Christmas books ticked off the ‘to be read’ list.  Magda Szubanski is an Australian icon and a treasure. She has appeared on most of our tv sets at one point or another, usually in the form of Sharon, the nation’s most famous second-best friend, in arguably the country’s best ever sitcom Kath and Kim. This autobiography, written with emotion, honesty and flair, winds it way around a long road that eventually reveals the threads that bind person and character. When I say […]



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