Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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 […]

Let’s just focus on the main story, the very good dugs, and Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite

Paper & Blood by Kevin Hearne

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Bingo 15: New Series Book 1 of the Ink & Sigil series (Ink & Sigil) came out in August 2020; book 2, presented momentarily, came out in 2021, just under a year later. It’s a recent enough publication that I was actually a little surprised to see it in the library. I was glad to see it though, both because I enjoyed book 1 and also because I was a little stuck for this square, but no longer. Paper & Blood picks up about where […]

An Unbelievable Life

Born Again Blakfella. by Jack Charles; Namila Benson

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  Jack Charles certainly started Born Again Blakfella with a memorable scene. As a beloved actor in Australia and noted First Nations activist, you would think that he would start by drawing attention to his achievements in both of these fields. But Charles decided to start his memoir with a facet of his life that didn’t lead to him getting glowing reviews in the newspapers: “It’s the middle of the night and I’m huddled over, dragging my dilly bad, which is chock full of all […]

Turns out, she’s still a genius

Turns out, I'm fine by Judith Lucy

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Last year, Judith Lucy was overwhelmed and dying (according to the name of her podcast) but in 2021 it turns out, she’s fine. Which I am supremely happy to hear, because she’s been one of my favourite comedians since the 90s, not long after she first hit Australia’s scene. This is Lucy’s memoir of a pretty shitty series of life events that she wrangles, as always, into great material. With this book however she goes a bit further in trying sort out life’s shit and […]

Great book; awful characters

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

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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

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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 […]



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