Merryn – Page 9 – Cannonball Read 17

Unsustainable human society hammered into the meridian of an alien planet

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

December 19, 2020 by Merryn 2 Comments

January is a tide-locked planet, one side permanently cold dark night, one blinding searing day, with human colonists clinging to precarious life on the narrow boundary. Outside of the human cities the monsters will kill you if the planet doesn’t get you first. Xiosphant is a socially rigid city state, forcing the endless twilight into an intricate regime of well-ordered citizens. “Everyone in Xiosphant was weirdly polite, just so long as you pretended all their made-up stuff was real.” Sophie is a student from the […]

Deadly! (It’s a good thing)

Top End Girl by Miranda Tapsell

December 18, 2020 by Merryn Leave a Comment

Miranda Tapsell is a proud Larrakia and Tiwi woman from Australia’s Northern Territory, growing up in Darwin and the small town of Jabiru in the Kakadu National Park. Her memoir is fairly light and breezy, but doesn’t shy away from the complexities of being a biracial Indigenous woman in a country and industry with a lot to learn about treating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and cultures with the respect they deserve. Miranda always loved to perform, but it wasn’t until Arrerente and Arabana […]

Playing chess in the dark

The MIrror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

December 9, 2020 by Merryn Leave a Comment

“This is what Henry does. He uses people up. He takes all they give him and more. When he is finished with them he is noisier and fatter and they are husks or corpses.” Thomas Cromwell has given a lot to King Henry. The Mirror and the Light starts with the husk of Anne Boleyn being turned into a corpse so that the King is free to move on to sweet Jane Seymour. Cromwell has gotten rid of the wife he got for his […]

Memories of forgetting disappear

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

December 5, 2020 by Merryn Leave a Comment

“People – and I’m no exception – seem capable of forgetting almost anything, much as if our island were unable to float in anything but an expanse of totally empty sea.” The Memory Police enforce the forgetting of the things that are disappeared from an unnamed island inhabited by an unnamed author. From time to time, the people of the island wake up with the restless knowledge that something else is gone and banish any contrary evidence from their homes, towns and minds. Things disappear, […]

Lies can’t survive mini-golf tour of Queensland’s glitter strip

The Fix by Nick Earls

December 5, 2020 by Merryn Leave a Comment

The Fix is very much a Nick Earls novel. Set in Brisbane, with a side trip to the Gold Coast, and rich in textural detail of the inner city and West End. More up the serious end of his comedy-drama range, but plenty of humour for those who like their Earls funny. This time the misfit everyman protaganist is Josh Lang, driven home to Brisbane from London by the Global Financial Crisis. He still holds hopes of making it as a journalist, backed by a […]

Too much for me. You?

The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lukas Rijneveld

December 4, 2020 by Merryn Leave a Comment

My local book club had a theme this year of reading books from around the world. I selected this one for our November read as it won a major award- the International Booker Prize for works translated into English, in this case from the Dutch, and I read a review article that really sold it. The young non-binary author had drawn on their own childhood in a strictly religious dairy farming family, which I could personally relate to. My book club buddies were also keen. […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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