Cannonball Read 13

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Lyrical, Soulful, Compelling

Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugan

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I’ve been wanting to read Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugan’s Giller prize-winning, Booker prize-shortlisted novel, ever since it came out in 2011- its only taken a “Music” bingo square to finally get me there.  Half-Blood Blues is a beautifully written, deeply layered, and historically fascinating novel about a group of mixed-race jazz musicians in Paris and Berlin during the wild interwar years.  The novel opens in Paris in 1941, when one of the band members gets ‘pinched’ by the occupying Nazis. From this navel, the […]

Auf Wiedersehen, Old Friend

Metropolis by Philip Kerr

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The last week or so, I’ve written in different outlets about the impact Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series has had on my reading journey and personal life. While acknowledging the many faults of these books, I love them in a special way. I think Kerr is great at capturing atmosphere and cynicism to produce some truly great crime reading. “Nazi Noir” is a burgeoning genre now but Kerr’s Gunther works were really the trendsetter. Knowing this would be the last one following Kerr’s untimely death, […]

eeeugh. gross in so many ways.

The Innocent by Ian McEwan

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TRIGGER WARNING: sexual violence- and other terrible things What started out as a fairly mild story of a man who is a:not good at his job and b: not a terribly interesting person lurched suddenly downhill into a dirge of rape fantasy, sexual violence, murder, and dismemberment. “Eeeugh” was putting it lightly. I’m not one to tell you, dear reader, what to do- but I strongly suggest avoiding this garbage fire. I am normally drawn to post-war drama- especially involving espionage and intrigue- but I […]

Please don’t make me defend a Nazi sympathizer

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In Dietrich & Riefenstahl, Karin Wieland compares the lives of two famous German movie personalities. On the surface, Marlin Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl seem very similar. Born a year apart, both harbored big dreams. Both defied their parents, studied dance and worked as actors. Both took lovers and refused to live their lives the way others demanded.  But when Hitler ascended to power, the two women reacted very differently. Dietrich became an American citizen and entertained Allied troops during the war, and Riefenstahl supported Hitler, […]

Horror Story on the Eve of Hitler’s Takeover

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Grossman returns with a prequel to his horrifying The Sleepwalkers, which I’ve reviewed earlier. In Children of Wrath, the respected Berlin homicide detective and decorated WWI veteran Willi Kraus is just starting to feel the effects of the rising tide of anti-Semitism. It is 1929, and Hitler is still largely viewed as a vulgar upstart by the self-absorbed political aristocracy, but his power is nonetheless growing as the Great Depression begins to ravage the war-weary German economy. The Kripo, the bureau of criminal investigation where […]



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