Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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As Slippery as a Fish

Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish by Richard Flanagan

November 5, 2025 by LittlePlat 2 Comments

“Billy Gould could not escape the growing suspicion that he had become entrapped in a book, a character whose future as much as his past was already written, determined, foretold, as unalterable as it was intolerable. What choice did he have but to destroy that book?”   I’ve saved the most flummoxing book of the year for the last square on the bingo board: a book which involves metafiction and magical realism in convict-era Tasmania. Thanks, Richard Flanagan. Gould’s Book of Fish has a convoluted […]

Filed Under: Featured, Fiction Tagged With: art, Australia, cbr17bingo, fish, Fishes, metafiction, Richard Flanagan

LittlePlat's CBR17 Review No:36 · Genres: Featured, Fiction · Tags: art, Australia, cbr17bingo, fish, Fishes, metafiction, Richard Flanagan ·
Rating:
· 2 Comments

Life is always happening and has happened and will happen

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan

June 12, 2025 by LittlePlat 1 Comment

One of Chekhov’s earliest stories was a parody of mental arithmetic questions asked of schoolchildren, of which Chekhov’s question 7 is typical: Wednesday, June 17, 1881, a train had to leave station A at 3am in order to reach station B at 11pm; just as the train was about to depart, however, an order came that the train had to reach station B by 7pm. Who loves longer, a man or a woman? Who? You, me, a Hiroshima resident or a slave labourer? And why […]

Filed Under: Audiobooks, Biography/Memoir, Featured, History, Non-Fiction Tagged With: #history, Australia, Australian authors, Baillie Gifford prize, HG Wells, Manhattan Project, Memoir-ish, memoirs, memory, nuclear war, Richard Flanagan, Tasmania, World War Two

LittlePlat's CBR17 Review No:7 · Genres: Audiobooks, Biography/Memoir, Featured, History, Non-Fiction · Tags: #history, Australia, Australian authors, Baillie Gifford prize, HG Wells, Manhattan Project, Memoir-ish, memoirs, memory, nuclear war, Richard Flanagan, Tasmania, World War Two ·
Rating:
· 1 Comment

No one had ever told them that at the end there was a choice and it is not the dying who make it.

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan

September 12, 2022 by Leedock 2 Comments

CBR14 BINGO: Bird square (Full disclosure: this book is not about birds. In my defense of this square filler, the book’s blurb mentions orange-bellied parrots. Parrots do appear in the story, albeit briefly, and I’m counting it because I had to read this book and I want credit for it.) Did you ever read a book that you knew would be considered a masterpiece by a lot of people, could even understand why people would think that and still find the reading of it not worth […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: cbr14, cbr14bingo, Fiction, Richard Flanagan

Leedock's CBR14 Review No:18 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: cbr14, cbr14bingo, Fiction, Richard Flanagan ·
Rating:
· 2 Comments

Of Lice and Men

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

February 20, 2022 by Zirza Leave a Comment

Nothing endures. Don’t you see, Bonox? That’s what Kipling meant. Not empires, not memories. We remember nothing. Maybe for a year or two. Maybe most of a life, if we live. Maybe. But then we will die, and who will ever understand any of this? And maybe we remember nothing most of all when we put our hands on our hearts and carry on about not forgetting.  On the face of it, the plot of The Narrow Road to the Deep North is about war: […]

Filed Under: Fiction, History Tagged With: Burma, Richard Flanagan, the narrow road to the deep north, World War II fiction

Zirza's CBR14 Review No:9 · Genres: Fiction, History · Tags: Burma, Richard Flanagan, the narrow road to the deep north, World War II fiction ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

All this was in the days when the world was wide, and the island of Tasmania was still the world.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

November 6, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

This is the 2014 Booker Prize winner, and one of the first books I paid attention to through the process of the award. Most years I’ve either missed it or looked back on it. It has seemed through that process and through my reading to be a very suitable winner both for that year and in general. It’s a good novel, and it’s a really powerful reading experience in a lot of ways. It is not inspiring, uplifting, invigorating, or any of the other kinds […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: Richard Flanagan, the narrow road to the deep north

vel veeter's CBR11 Review No:615 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: Richard Flanagan, the narrow road to the deep north ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments

An ironic question and a sweeping time period

June 16, 2015 by bonnie 1 Comment

I read Richard Flanagan’s most excellent Booker winner, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, last December, and I wanted to read more of his works. I have not read a lot of literature from ANZAC (that is, Australia-New Zealand Commonwealth), so I am interested in seeing what is out there. The Sound of One Hand Clapping takes place in Tasmania and features themes of immigration and identity, so I was curious to see how it compared to other works. The Sound of One Hand […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: bonnie, Richard Flanagan

bonnie's CBR7 Review No:106 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: bonnie, Richard Flanagan ·
Rating:
· 1 Comment
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