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:

“Maple thought optimistically that human beings, on their good days, weren’t much dimmer than sheep.”

Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann

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When a shepherd is killed in a little Irish village, his sheep decide to solve his murder themselves. The investigation is led by the wise Miss Maple who soon discovers that everything may be much more complicated than it seemed at first. The premise is great, and there are some very cute ideas in this book. What I liked especially was that Swann didn’t make the sheep humans in sheep bodies but that she tried to give them their own way of thinking. Supposedly, they […]

Not Just Problems, But Solutions.

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

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This has been on my radar since I first read ASKReviews’ great review in the best/worst of CBR10 post. Now that I have finally read it, I can say that I should have done that sooner. I don’t know that any book examines racism and its facets as clearly and concisely as this one does it, while also effortlessly uncovering one’s own biases and prejudices. First of all, the author discusses the definition of racism that should be used, and it is one of institutional […]

If you must break the law, do it to seize power.

SPQR I: The King's Gambit by John Maddox Roberts

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In the year 70 BC, highborn Roman official Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger tries to solve two murders, the disembowelment of a foreign merchant and the garroting of an ex-gladiator, and an arson that were all committed in his district. Organised crime has an unbreakable hold on the city, and corruption, intrigues, and brutality run rampant, but these crimes seem much more than business as usual. The book seems to be well researched and contains a wealth of information about the Rome of this particular […]

Resistance Is Not Futile

Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt

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Greenblatt examines the circumstances, the psychology, and the downfall of some of Shakespeare’s tyrants, namely Richard III and Macbeth who came into power through murder, Lear and Leontes who descended into madness and became tyrants during their legitimate reign, and finally Julius Caesar and Coriolanus who set out to topple the republic, in which Caesar succeeded, but which was thwarted in Coriolanus’ case. On top of that, the book does not only explain the historical and political realities during Shakespeare’s time which were sometimes reflected […]

Just because it’s true doesn’t make it a good story.

To Cut a Long Story Short by Jeffrey Archer

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This is a collection of 14 short stories with most of them based on true incidents, some observed by the author himself, some told to him by others. They range from a married woman being seduced by a con artist, to a South African having a change of heart regarding his racist views, to a man funding his talentless brother’s life as an artist. At first glance, the stories seemed to be rather diverse in their range of topics and characters, but the further I […]

Nothing Stays Secret Forever

Holding by Graham Norton

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In a remote Irish village, a skeleton is found during construction work on an old farm. The local policeman, in trying to solve the mystery, has to dig deep into the past of the village and its inhabitants, and uncovers numerous secrets that hold the key to the case. This whole book is almost offensively average in just about everything. The characters are strangely flat, in that a ton of information is shared about them, but there seems to be absolutely no way to really […]



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