Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search

Great book; awful characters

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

by 3 Comments

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

by Leave a Comment

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

by Leave a Comment

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

by Leave a Comment

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 […]

Reading, Reading, Reading, RAWHIDE!

The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

The Dame by Richard Stark

Tricky by Josh Stallings

Quarry's Deal by Max Alan Collins

The Plea by Steve Cavanagh

by Leave a Comment

I read a lot last week but also had a busy week at work (a good busy). Every time I tried to write a review on one of these books, all of them good, I just didn’t have the time or energy. So here’s a big update dump of the stuff I read in the last week and I’d be glad to tease them out more in the comments if anyone is curious… “The True History of the Kelly Gang” I enjoyed large parts of […]

They fought the law, and everybody won.

About a Girl: A Mother's Powerful Story of Raising Her Transgender Child by Rebekah Robertson with Georgie Stone

by Leave a Comment

Rebekah and her husband were excited when they had twin boys, George and Harry, and quickly settled into family life. George knew from a very early age, however, that she was really a girl, and started going by Georgie. While Rebekah was immediately on board with Georgie’s gender identity, dad was unsure at first about how to deal with this revelation. It didn’t take him long though, to realise what was happening and to join in with supporting Georgie’s expression of herself.  Mum, dad and […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo