Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About blauracke

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Loves books. (Learn more about this Cannonballer: blauracke's Quick Questions interview.)

blauracke's Reviews:

So, what happened to the goat?

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

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When young socialite Flora Poste is orphaned, she decides to move to her cousin Judith Starkadder’s farm in Sussex where her Aunt Ada Doom, who saw “something nasty in the woodshed” as a girl and has not been right in the head ever since, rules over the family with an iron hand, and everyone seems to live in abject misery. She immediately decides to help her relatives escape their squalid and dreary existence by “tidying up” the place and its inhabitants. A parody of the […]

God Will Bless Your Hustle

Be(com)ing Nigerian: A Guide by Elnathan John

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A satirical take on what it means to be Nigerian or to live in Nigeria, this is a deeply funny book and, at the same time, a very harsh criticism of all the ills plaguing Nigerian society, ranging from religious hypocrisy to corruption, and from small-time scams to police brutality. The abuse of power and the drive for bettering one’s own standing at someone else’s expense can be found not only in the public, but also in the private sphere, and is called the hustle […]

You’ve Got to Nip It in the Bud

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

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In 1936, Berzelius ‘Buzz’ Windrop, a dreadful demagogue, is elected President of the United States. In short order, he turns the country into a fascist dictatorship in which every form of dissent or criticism is crushed immediately. In a small town in Vermont, newspaper editor Doremus Jessup opposes the new regime. A biting satire and a cautionary tale of the rise of fascism, this is eerily prescient and a sharp reminder that democracy is fragile and has to be actively protected, and that no country […]

“The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters.”

Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution by Mona Eltahawy

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In the first chapter of the book, Mona Eltahawy asks, “Why do they hate us?”, meaning societies in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East and their hatred of women. And then she writes, “They don’t hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American cliché had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us.” Eltahawy is not one to mince words, and to contend her use of the word ‘hate’ is impossible in the face of everything that […]

“The world could go on after our destruction.”

Accident: A Day's News by Christa Wolf

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On a beautiful spring day in 1986, an East German writer putters around her garden and house while waiting for a call from the hospital where her brother is undergoing brain surgery. At the same time, news and concerns about the Chernobyl nuclear accident constantly intrude on her thoughts. Written in the form of a monologue and a rather short one at that, there are still a myriad of topics that are at least touched on, from the traps of technology, humanity’s relationship with science, […]

A European Tragedy

Adults In The Room: My Battle With Europe’s Deep Establishment by Yanis Varoufakis

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Renowned economist Yanis Varoufakis gives an account of his brief stint as finance minister of Greece during the negotiations with the so-called troika consisting of the European Commission, the IMF, and the ECB in the spring of 2015 in order to restructure his country’s enormous debt. As part of the then newly elected and radical left Syriza government that was widely mistrusted by the political establishment of Europe, and as a novice politician, he faced an uphill battle against an overpowering adversary. I have always […]



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