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:

Fools for Love

Up at the Villa by W. Somerset Maugham

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Mary Panton, a wealthy and beautiful widow who lives in an old villa in the hills overlooking Florence, is asked by a longtime friend to marry him. While he is away for a few days and she is considering his proposal, an encounter with a young refugee could destroy all her plans for the future. This is a short but intense novel that makes some poignant observations on the many facets of love, with Florence and the Tuscany region as a beautiful backdrop against which […]

“Man errs, till he has ceased to strive.”

Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend by Thomas Mann

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In this modern take on the Faust myth, composer Adrian Leverkühn, a cold but brilliant character, sells his soul to the devil for twenty-four years of unparalleled and innovative accomplishments in his chosen field. His life is chronicled by his childhood friend Serenus who is the only one close to Adrian, since isolation from others and abstaining from loving anyone is part of the pact, too. I bought this book about 15 years ago, read the first 300 pages, decided that I had absolutely lost […]

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Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling

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In QualityLand, where big corporations use algorhythms to determine what inhabitants need or want at any given time, Peter Jobless receives an item that he does not want or need. He sets out to return it, but encounters some unexpected obstacles. At the same time, the politically progressive android John of Us is running against a right-wing demagogue for the presidency of QualityLand. This is a very funny satire describing a terrifying dystopic future that is not so far removed from our current reality as […]

How Grossly Do They Insult Us

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft

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In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote this essay in response to the philosophers of the 18th century that were of the opinion that women were not only inherently inferior to men, but also lacking in reason compared to them, and would thus not need any kind of rational education. She argues that women need to be educated in order to truly fulfill their role in society, and to become more than mere ornamentation for men. Wollstonecraft is of course no feminist in the modern sense, and […]

Chance of Failure

The Pledge by Friedrich Dürrenmatt

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When a young girl is found murdered near a small village in Switzerland, a travelling salesman is quickly accused of the crime, and the case is closed. Only one detective is convinced that the real perpetrator is still at large, and that he will strike again. The book is based on Dürrenmatt’s own screenplay for the 1958 film It Happened in Broad Daylight, which had a pedagogic purpose in raising awareness of the threat of crimes against children. Dürrenmatt was not entirely satisfied with the […]

Plateaus of Spasmodic Weirdness

The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

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Lenore Beadsman’s life becomes very complicated all of a sudden when her great-grandmother and twenty-five other people vanish from a nursing home, her cockatiel starts talking without pause, and the telephones at the company she works for go crazy. While looking for her missing great-grandmother, she has to confront other members of her family and her family’s history, and acknowledge the lack of control she has over her own life. Lenore is sort of a blank canvas that others project their needs on, for instance, […]



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