Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Twisty Turny, More Please! (Bingo – Orange)

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

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Ah Reading. Love it, can’t seem to focus on it. Pandemic, amiright? Something about staring at the same walls all day, and the same computer, and then needing to stare at this computer more to do reviews just doesn’t jive. I’m getting caught up with 3 books that I read…in the past few months. 9 books behind on my Cannonball. What I’m saying is, it’s a bit dire. But what I’m ALSO saying, is here I am, trying anyway. Hip hooray.* *I started this draft […]

“The rumors were fed well and grew fat and solid. They sprouted legs and heads, and they never died.”

The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1) by Jane Harper

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I really liked this. Just a very solid murder mystery with good character work, and great atmosphere. Set in a small farming town in rural Australia, The Dry follows two murder cases, one from twenty years back when Aaron lived in the town with his father, and in present day as Aaron has come back to town for the first time to attend the funeral of his former best friend, Luke Hadler, who in addition to killing himself, also murdered his wife and small son, […]

“When you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

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#CBR12 Bingo: White Whale (on my TBR list since early 2014) (Would also work for Cannonballer Says, Debut, or Red or Yellow – depending on what edition of the novel you are reading) Don Tillman lives his life on a fairly rigid schedule. He eats the same things every week, he has set aside a certain amount of time for work, exercise, cleaning his flat and so forth, and any deviations that force him to change the schedule makes him annoyed. He doesn’t socialise much, except for the […]

Australian spookiness. Just add panpipes and a didgeridoo.

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

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  In 1975, I saw an Australian movie, Picnic at Hanging Rock, one of the most perfect and perfectly weird films I have ever seen.  The impact of this film still resonates with me, and when I was looking for another book at Powells, and noticed this, I HAD to have it.  I had no idea the film was based on a book, and yet here we are.  And it is every bit as freakily good as the movie as.   It begins as a […]

“A man without rights in this world is not freed from his responsibilities.”

Amnesty by Aravind Adiga

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My mom is an unrepentant fast-forwarder. Any movie montage, car chase, fight scene, or any extended section of a movie with no dialogue is gonna get fast-forwarded through. (I grew up thinking this was totally normal and acceptable, and have had several boyfriends go “WAIT, what are you DOING?!?!” when I started fast-forwarding through a scene I thought was skippable.) This book, while totally lovely, could definitely have used a fast-forward button. Danny (Dhananjaya) is from Sri Lanka, living illegally in Australia. He came on […]

Because language has suffered enough…

Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language by Don Watson

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When I first read the example ‘The competition policy reforms further improve the performance of government business enterprises through a program of regulation review, enhanced prices oversight, application of competitive neutrality principles and procedures for structural reform of public monopolies,’ on p65 of Death Sentence, I didn’t quite get the author’s point. I mean, I understood what it meant. But the next example of language spelled out exactly why a person like me needed to read this book. ‘Language is a key issue of access […]



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