Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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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 […]

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 […]

Character-driven crime, as seen on TV

Bad Debts (Jack Irish 1) by Peter Temple

Dead Point (Jack Irish 3) by Peter Temple

White Dog (Jack Irish 4) by Peter Temple

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Yes, I’m reviewing books 1, 3 and 4 of a series, and one that really should be read in order.  But I picked these up in my usual cheapskate way – tempted by some kind of Kindle Deal too good to refuse, and I’d already seen the TV movies, so I wasn’t too fussed that I read them out of order (3, then 4, then 1) and don’t have 2 yet. Jack Irish (played by Guy Pearce on TV) is a former criminal lawyer, still […]

More teens taking on social justice, Australian edition!

Amelia Westlake Was Never Here by Erin Gough

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CBR11Bingo – Far and Away! This book is set in Australia, which according to a random internet website, is about halfway around the world from me. Will Everhart loathes her life at her new stuffy school Rosemead girls’ academy.  She’s always fought loudly on the side of injustice, leaving her a little lonely and unliked at her public school, but that’s only exacerbated here.  Even though the principal has got an eye on her, and even though her grades are failing, she still can’t keep […]

The end is the beginning

Clade by James Bradley

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Clade: “a group of organisms believed to have evolved from a common ancestor, according to the principles of cladistics.” Told over decades, Clade is a bit like a short story compendium of characters from the same family. Adam and Ellie start a family in the shadow of global warming and the catastrophes it will unveil. As they age and grow apart, the narrative shifts to other family members as they live through different iterations of the same problem: how to survive a world with closing […]

Alice doesn’t live here anymore

Music and Freedom by Zoë Morrison

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(My apologies this isn’t available in the US, not even on Kindle, though maybe there’s an audiobook? That’s never happened to me before!) I’ve struggled a bit with my review writing since about November last year, letting them slide just a little too long after I’ve finished the books and then letting my perfectionism slow me down once I do finally get around to writing. I get caught up, and then BAM! I’m four reviews behind again. That’s no place to be with a book […]



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