blauracke – Page 12 – Cannonball Read 17

If Only I Could Be Happy

The Darkness (The Hulda Series Book 1) by Ragnar Jónasson

July 14, 2020 by blauracke Leave a Comment

Only days from retirement, Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir is given the opportunity to choose one cold case to solve before she leaves. She immediately picks the case of a young Russian asylum seeker who was washed up dead on a lonely shore the year before. This is a book that seems to take great pleasure in wallowing in all the misery and desolation that the author can conjure. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a detective in a Nordic Noir that has a more depressing […]

“It is better to fall off than to freeze.”

The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer

July 8, 2020 by blauracke Leave a Comment

The Eiger is a 3,967 metre (13,015 ft) mountain in the Swiss Alps, and the White Spider is a firn field in the upper portion of its infamous north face. Heinrich Harrer was a member of the first team to successfully climb it in 1938, and this is his account of this feat, and also a history of all attempts, successful or not, from 1935 to 1964. Back then, the Eiger north face was considered such a challenging and deadly climb that in German it […]

In the City of Mirages

The Temptation of Forgiveness (Commissario Brunetti 27) by Donna Leon

July 6, 2020 by blauracke 2 Comments

After one of his wife’s colleagues asks Brunetti to investigate her son’s school because she suspects that drugs are sold to the students there, the worried professoressa‘s husband is found severely injured at the foot of a bridge. At the same time, Brunetti is tasked with finding out who is leaking sensitive information from the Questura. I haven’t read a Commissario Brunetti book in a long time, but it is easy to return to the world Donna Leon created because nothing much seems to have […]

“In the end, meat is meat, it doesn’t matter where it’s from.”

Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

July 3, 2020 by blauracke Leave a Comment

Because a virus has infected all animals and made their meat poisonous, a new product has been established: “special meat,” which means human flesh. Since the death of his child, Marcos, the manager of a slaughterhouse, has become frustrated with his job and the realities of the society he lives in. If you didn’t know how animals are processed in a slaughterhouse, how they are stunned, bled, dismembered, skinned and gutted, then you will learn a lot about it in this book because Agustina Bazterrica […]

Against the Tyrannies of Silence

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

June 30, 2020 by blauracke Leave a Comment

This collection of 15 essays and speeches examines oppression in many forms, from racism to sexism, heterosexism, colourism, or classism. Audre Lorde described herself as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” and thus was a target of many of the various isms; due to this, her thoughts on intersectionality are especially potent. Differences must be acknowledged because, for instance, “black feminism is not white feminism in blackface,” and I think that her observations on this issue are especially astute because through them she exposes some uncomfortable […]

Everything Is Flawed (It’s Humanity’s Fault)

Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang

June 22, 2020 by blauracke Leave a Comment

At the end of the 22nd century, a group of Martian students is sent to Earth in order to improve the relationship between the two planets that has been tenuous since a war of independence a few decades earlier. When they return to Mars 5 years later, they discover that their old lives do not fit them anymore. Although this is a science fiction story that has its share of space ships and advanced technology, it fundamentally aspires to be a meditation on human nature […]

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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