Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About kniki

CBR12 participant
CBR13 participant
CBR14 Participant

'Once a reader, always a reader' Hi! I'm from Australia!

kniki's Reviews:

A murder mystery that wasn’t what I expected…

56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard

by Leave a Comment

… but then again I don’t read a lot of fiction so I didn’t really know what to expect. I picked this book up from the display near the library entrance. Not gonna lie, I can’t remember what drove me to pick it up, but it was a good distraction for a few days. It goes like this: girl meets guy in supermarket. Whirlwind romance moves more quickly than usual due to the beginning of Covid-19 lockdowns. They move in together after only a few […]

Find your way to a rewarding hobby – cryptic crosswords!

Rewording the Brain by David Astle

by 1 Comment

After coming across a chance social media post containing a cryptic crossword clue and instructions for how to solve it, I fell headlong into the addictive craze and borrowed this book from the library. I’ve now kept it for its maximum number of renewals and have to return it so I’m on the lookout for a second-hand copy that I can get for keeps. David Astle, for those who don’t know, regularly sets cryptic crosswords for a couple of Australian newspapers and runs the ‘letters’ […]

An almost unbelievable true crime story

Joe Cinque's Consolation by Helen Garner

by Leave a Comment

I listened to this audio book as part of my project to read Helen Garner’s collection of books this year and also because of my horror/fascination at the crime and subsequent trial featured within. (As proof of this, I found the book on my shelf a few weeks after I finished listening, completely forgetting I had bought it at a second hand booksale.) In Australia the late 90s, a uni student plotted to murder her boyfriend, letting her best friend and some other uni mates […]

A good start to my year of Helen Garner

The Spare Room by Helen Garner

by 3 Comments

As promised to myself, this year I’m making my way through the works of Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist Helen Garner. And wouldn’t you know it, The Spare Room happened to turn up at a ‘swap rather than shop ‘ event with some friends (the clothes swaps having happily extended to books and household items, etc.) This is a short-ish novel that didn’t take long to read but stayed with me for a while after. Over the course of three weeks Helen (yes […]

Explores the most common killers and how to reduce your chance of succumbing to them

How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Michael Greger MD

by 2 Comments

Michael Greger MD has dedicated his life to spreading the word about plant based diets and their health benefits as his grandmother was saved from dying young through this very strategy. In Part 1, he systematically explores the biggest killers including heart, lung and brain diseases, a variety of cancers, high blood pressure, and diabetes; explaining what the research says about their causes. (Hint: it’s mostly through diet.) It was interesting to read that diet has a much bigger impact on health outcomes then genetics […]

How to live a longer, healthier life with 9 strategies

The blue zones: lessons for living longer from the people who've lived the longest by Dan Buettner

by Leave a Comment

Maybe it’s just because I read this in January, you know, that time of year when we all get excited about what we can do to better ourselves… or maybe it’s just because I really enjoy reading Dan Buettner’s research on centenarians alongside real life stories. In any case, here I am again with a review of another book about Blue Zones. In this book, evidence and data about the healthiest and longest lived people are given expression through the stories of individuals who epitomise […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo