Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“Stretched on the loom was the huge white cloth of the North. We were the threads.”

Mrs. Mike: A Novel by Benedict and Nancy Freedman

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Cbr13bingo The Wilds, Bingo #3 (four corners and center) Mrs. Mike is a novel based on the true story of Katherine Mary Flannigan, a Boston girl who moved to Canada’s Northwest Territory for health reasons in 1907 and then made a life there. The novel was first published in 1947 and still appears on high school reading lists. I remember the copy we had on our bookshelves when I was a kid, and I remember reading and loving this story when I was about 12 […]

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 […]

The River – Peter Heller (2019)

The River by Peter Heller

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CBR13Bingo – The Wilds This is a consummate river novel. There’s been a few of those over the years like Deliverance, Heart of Darkness, and The African Queen. This one shares some of the sensibilities of especially Deliverance, with some atmospheric qualities of nature writers. Two friends from college have decided to spend their summer canoeing, hunting, fishing, and camping in the far Canadian northeast. Early one, they run across two “fat Texans” who are drunk or high, and hear the faint traces of a […]



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