Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

12 months of the year in English, French, Spanish and German

One Year: Une Année  Un Año  Ein Jahr by Ioana Stoain

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There is a lot to love about the book One Year: Une Année  Un Año  Ein Jahr. There are adorable illustrations by Julia Leister that give things a bright, fun, and whimsical look. As the publisher’s description says, these  “retro-style illustrations” make things cozy and happy. The images tell you the month with the people’s clothing and actions, plus the weather is a great clue. I really enjoyed all of this until the whole point of the book. The four different languages. Ioana Stoain puts […]

The East German Harry Potter for goth kids

Krabat by Otfried Preußler

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One of my favourite books in middle school, reread it here in my exile at my mum’s place and while it clearly is for children (well..), it’s as deliciously dark as I remember. In the early 18th century, Krabat, a 14-year old Wendish beggar boy (check out what that people is, you’re in for a cool history/ethnology lesson) finds himself called to a lonely mill in the middle of the woods. He starts an exhausting apprenticeship, where the mysterious miller doesn’t just teach him and […]

Priest meets hot underaged shepherd girl

The Heretic of Soana by Gerhart Hauptmann

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If you want a quick understanding of German Naturalism, read this. Gerhart Hauptmann is a controversial figure in literature: he was adored/instrumentalised by the Nazis, despite his clear textual deviations from their ideologies (let’s just call it “complicated”), but his influence on literature and language is undisputed up until today. This book really sums up everything that happened in his earlier works: young priest moves to remote village in the mountainous parts of Northern Italy, is stricken by the poverty of a banished family, but also […]

We’re all so f*cked

The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

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It took me ages to finish this book. Not because I had troubles reading it, the language in this is in fact incredibly fluid, I would even say that German prose hardly gets better than this. It took me so long because the dawning realisation that people don’t change, they don’t ever change, is a lot to bear. The sheer relatability of this upset me to the core and it should reach so many more people. The World of Yesterday is the memoir of Stefan […]

German Romanticism 101

Immensee by Theodor Storm

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Fun Fact up front: I read this at the lake today, where I cannonballed a few teens to shame and felt very good about myself. Still got it! xD I pulled this out of one of the free book cases and gave it a try, we had to read Storm in school but for some reason never this early novella, which apparently is one of his most famous and often translated ones. I can see why, it’s pretty representative of late German Romanticism/early Realism in […]

What if your educational voyage does not teach you anything?

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A few words in advance This is my second attempt to do the cannonball read. My first was rather short-lived because I could not find the time to write reviews anymore and I hope I will make it this time. Bear in mind that English is not my first language, which means I will make mistakes. Feel free to point them out to me in the comments. The Book Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) is set before World War I. Hans Castorp, scion […]



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