Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Meaning of Treasure

Treasure in the Lake by Jason Pamment

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Treasure in the Lake has a pleasant look with the cool water and two adventurers on the cover. The contrast of light and dark hints at a deep mystery. But Jason Pamment fell short for me with the actual story. The cover was the draw and the story, well, only hides an abandoned village and not the wild ride I thought might be inside. All points I give this book come from the artwork. The story was weak and had several holes. The dual story […]

Another view of Australian history

A room made of leaves by Kate Grenville

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My local book club chose A room made of leaves by Kate Grenville for our last meeting. This was totally going to be a bingo square for book club, and then i realised the flora on the cover. So, Flora bingo space it is!It’s an odd little book club, started by a group of women who went to teacher training college in the late 60s. They remained in intermittent/inconsistent touch with each other, forming the book club a few years ago. Then the daughter of […]

They Knew Each Other By the End

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

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Read as part of CBR13bingo: flora. There are trees and plants on the cover.  If I were to teach a class on creative writing, I would without question assign one of Liane Moriarty’s books. The only other one I’ve read of hers was Big Little Lies, mostly because her accuracy on relationship dynamics is so painfully on point that I can’t stand it. I imagine I’ll finish her catalog someday. Whether I do or not, she’s a writer that perspective writers should study. Her characters are so […]

An excellent, atmospheric Australian mystery and family drama.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

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This is my favorite of Jane Harper’s four books. The setting is outrageous, and such a good place for something like this to go down, even more so because it’s a real place in the actual world and not, like, an alien planet or something. This is some ‘the year 2133 on Mars’ kind of shit, except it’s now and it’s Australia. I just couldn’t get over how they all live on this giant plot of land as big as my state, and our main […]

One Day in February

The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire by Chloe Hooper

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Australia gets a lot of coverage overseas when it comes to our devastating bushfires. The collective bushfires of January 2020 were especially notable for their sense of apocalypse. But as horrific as the 2020 fires were, the summer of 2009 was even more deadly. February 7 was a particularly devastating day for my home state of Victoria; known as ‘Black Saturday,’ the extreme weather conditions helped fan the flames of over 400 individual fires, killing 173 people, and impacting many, many more. I had friends […]



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