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books This is a list of books I've red recently. In case I've red a translation, the original title is given in brackets. After becoming a father at the age of 37, I do not have that much time left to read. As my mother said: "You had enough time to read!" Occasionally I chill out by reading a popular and long running german science fiction series, but I don't think I need to list those here, neither occasional reading in the Bhagavad Gita etc. |
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| George Psychoundakis | The Cretan Runner |
| Crete during the 2nd World War. Spring 2009 | |
| Paul Theroux | The Kingdom by the Sea |
| Travel around the british coast | |
| Dieter Hildebrandt | Vater Unser - Gleich nach der Werbung |
| Nov/Dec 2008 | |
| Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul | An Area of Darkness |
| Oct/Nov 2008 | |
| Arundhati Roy | The God of Small Things |
| Sept/Oct 2008 | |
| Dieter Hildebrandt (mit Bernd Schroeder) | Ich musste immer lachen |
| July 2008 | |
| Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul | Among the Believers - An Islamic Journey |
| ...through Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, 1979-1980. April/May 2008 | |
| Clara Viebig | Das Kreuz im Venn |
| 1908 novel which takes place in my home region, the Hohes Venn (Hautes Fagnes) in the Northern Eifel. That is why I read it. March 2008 | |
| Dervla Murphy | On a Shoestring to Coorg |
| Through south India, especially the province of Coorg, in the 70s. Oct/Nov 2007 | |
| Dervla Murphy | Where the Indus is young |
| Trip through Baltistan (west Himalaya, Pakistan). With her six year old daughter. In Winter. Brrrrr. May/June 2007 | |
| Franz Kafka | Amerika |
| Jan/Feb 2007 | |
| Valerio Massimo Manfredi | Alexander: The Ends of the Earth (Il confine del mondo) |
| Third part of trilogy. August/September 2006 in Bulgaria | |
| Yasar Kemal | Töte die Schlange (Yilani Öldürseler) |
| Strong novel about a boy in Turkey who is expected to kill his mother for reasons of honour. June 22nd 2006, on a train trip from Bern to Göttingen | |
| Thomas Ziegler | Stimmen der Nacht |
| What would have happened if the Americans had realized the Morgenthau-Plan in Germany, and not the Marshall-Plan? A grim world with a de-industrialized and politically radicallized Germany, and a strong military power of exile-Germans in South America, with Borman striving for a nuclear Holocaust. Award winning novel by the recently deceased Rainer Zubeil aka Thomas Ziegler, with whom I once had the fun to have many beers with... Feb/March 2006 | |
| Valerio Massimo Manfredi | Alexander - The Sands of Ammon (Le sabbie di amon) |
| Second part of the trilogy on Alexander the Great, read on our second stay on Thassos. Maybe we have to go there a third time... Sept. 2005 | |
| Jack London | König Alkohol (John Barleycorn) |
| Autobiographical novel on booze addiction. Sept. 2005 on Thassos. | |
| Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul | India - A Million Mutinies Now |
| Good friend of Paul Theroux, and since we read almost everything of Paul Theroux, I have to try Naipaul as well. Not travel writing but more a presentation of society, in particular the cultural confusion of so-called third world and western world clashes. | |
| Hermann Hesse | Siddhartha |
| Oct/Nov 2004, mostly while waiting for car repair in Drogenbos | |
| Dervla Murphy | The Ukimwi Road - From Kenya to Zimbabwe |
| ...and that by bicycle, in your sixties. Lot about AIDS. | |
| Valerio Massimo Manfredi | Alexander - Child of a Dream (Il figlio del sogno) |
| First part of a trilogy about Alexander the Great. Perfect holiday read, picked up on the northern greek island of Thassos, so close to the original location. June/July 2004 | |
| Italo Calvino | Der Baron auf den Bäumen (Il barone rampante) |
| At the age of twelve, baron Cosimo Piovasco di Rondo decides to live on trees and will never ever set foot on the ground again. Live from a higher perspective... June 2004 | |
| Marion Gräfin von Dönhoff | Namen, die keiner mehr nennt |
| Geschichte und Vertreibung aus Ostpreussen, aus dem Blickwinkel der Familie von Dönhoff 7 Jan. 2004 (Flug nach Washington) | |
| Ryszard Kapuscinski | Another Day of Live |
| Angola's independence in 1975 Dec 2003 - Jan. 2004 | |
| Thor Heyerdahl | The Kon-Tiki Expedition |
| By raft from Peru to Polynesia, to proove that Polynesia was also settled from South America and not only from Asia November - December 2003 | |
| Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen | Der Abentheuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch |
| Das ist: Die Beschreibung des Lebens eines seltsamen Vaganten, genant Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim, wo und welcher gestalt Er nemlich in diese Welt kommen, was er darinn gesehen, gelernt, erfahren und ausgestanden, auch warumb er solche wieder freiwillig quittiert. Überaus lustig und manniglich nutzlich zu lesen. September - November 2003 | |
| Joseph Rovan | Geschichte der Deutschen |
| ...up to 1997 August/September 2003 | |
| George Orwell | (The complete novels) |
| Single volume Penguin paperback edition of "Animal Farm", "Burmese Days", "A Clergyman's Daughter", "Coming up for Air", "Keep the Aspidastra Flying", and "Nineteen Eighty-Four". July - x 2003 | |
| Bill Napier | Shattered Icon |
| Thriller turning around a holy relic and a new calender proposal at the time of Elisabeth I. Arranging leap years every 4 years in a 33 year cycle ( = lifetime of Jesus Christ) and moving the zero meridian to 77 degrees west would fix Easter to a more confined date. Both protestants and catholics would like to claim this as their idea. July 2003 | |
| Jaroslav Hasek | The Good Soldier Svejk (...) |
| World War I satire March - May 2003 | |
| Paul Theroux | Dark Star Safari |
| From Cairo to Capetown, only once leaving the ground (from Sudan to Ethiopia). Bad points for charity. Feb. - March 2003 | |
| Annie Proulx | The Shipping News |
| Newfoundland drama Feb. 2003 | |
| Gottfried Keller | Der grüne Heinrich |
| Big german novel from the 19th century - story of young idealistic Heinrich Lee, who sets off on a career as an artist painter, but who is not really in touch with (economic) reality, and finally fails. Also a bit of a /Werter/ figure. Nov. 2002 - Feb. 2003 | |
| Bill Napier | The Lure |
| His third novel, this time about a positive detection of an intelligent signal pattern from outer space, but unlike SETI, which searches in radio waves, this one looks at cosmic rays seen in some underground detector. I like the caving bits - wonder how Bill knows so much about caving... ;-) Dec 2002 | |
| Erich Maria Remarque | Im Westen Nichts Neues |
| Famous and partly gory (anti-)war novel ("Nothing new at the western front"). November 2002 | |
| Paul Theroux | Riding The Iron Rooster |
| By train via Siberia to and criss-cross through China, ending up in Tibet, in the late 80s. November 2002 | |
| William Blum | Rouge State |
| Subtitled 'A Guide to the World's only Super Power' - bound to make you very angry. October 2002 | |
| Sebastian Haffner | Von Bismarck zu Hitler |
| Not a history book for dummies, but a review and some new thoughts about it all. October 2002 | |
| Misha Glenny | The Balkans |
| 1804-1999 - Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers. A history. September/October 2002 | |
| Paul Theroux | The Old Patagonian Express |
| By train from Boston to Patagonia. Unfortunately avoiding Chile, the only country in South America were I've been so far. August/September 2002 | |
| Ryszard Kapuscinski | The Shadow of the Sun |
| Good book about Africa and african live. July 2002 | |
| Robert Musil | Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (I) |
| A big project. March-August 2002 | |
| Steven Weinberg | Die ersten drei Minuten (The First Three Minutes) |
| Old (1979) classic on cosmology. Big Bang, particle physics and gauge theories for the (wo)man on the street. May 2002 | |
| Jacques Berndorf | Eifel-Wasser |
| Number 10 in Berndorf's Eifel crime novels. This one even mentions a scandal in our local water supply company (in Monschau). Cool as ever. May 2002 | |
| Queen Liliuokalani | Hawaii's Story |
| What starts as a not so interesting memoir becomes in the end a great document about how America, as meanwhile usual, doesn't give a damn on anybody or anything, not even their apparently own principles, certainly not moral, when it comes about to make some huge personal profit, and gobbles up another country. Feb/March 2002 | |
| Bede Griffith | The Marriage of East and West |
| About Christianity and Hinduism and why they should complement each other. Feb 2002 | |
| Robert Louis Stevenson | Treasure Island |
| Devoured in Bulgaria while the country almost disappeared in snow. Jan 2002 | |
| Rick and Marchie Carroll (Eds.) | Hawai'i - Travelers' Tales Guide |
| September 11 prevented our Hawai'i trip - now we go with some months delay. I found this collection of Hawai'i related excerpts from travel literature very useful to get into the mood... | |
| William Bligh | The Mutiny On Board H.M.S. Bounty |
| Everybody knows this - probably from one of the three movie adaptions of the novel - and most may know that its a true story, but not so many know that the novel and the movies are wrong about the character Captain W. Bligh. This is his report about the mission and the incidents of this fateful voyage. I got lost in this one so that a pickpocketer had an easy game to steal my wallet at Dublin train station. | |
| Nikos Kazantzakis | Report to Greco |
| Running out of literature on Crete - so the natural choice of a book to get there was anything by Kazantzakis. | |
| Theodor Fontane | Der Stechlin |
| Preussian family story on the backdrop of the last years of the 19th century. The general politic picture I could still gather from my school knowledge of history, but there have been a lot of details (figures in arts and politics) which were fortunately explained in a huge appendix. | |
| Jorge Luis Borges | Fiktionen (Ficciones) |
| Read this during my Crete holiday: a collection of Borges' short stories (in a german translation), including the one which was stolen by Umberto Eco to form the center plot of 'The Name of the Rose'. | |
| Jostein Gaarder | Maya |
| Mystery about Goya's painting, a spanish flamenco dancer, loads of science talk, taking place on Fiji and Madrid (and thus as if it was written for me). | |
| Mikhail Bulgakov | The Heart of a Dog |
| A moskov surgeon plants human testicles and brain glands into a dog which then transforms into a human being with rather odd manners... all this to be understood as a satire on the communist system and society in the Soviet Union. | |
| Tim Severin | In Search of Moby Dick |
| Irish writer and traveller who went to Nuku Hiva (Marquesas), Pamilican (Philipines), Tonga, and Lamarala (East Indonesia, just west off Timor) to spend time with native whale hunters (they jump on manta rays, whale sharks and sperm whales and treat them with their harpoons which are too precious for them to be lost) and research the legend of white whales. | |
| Paul Theroux | The Great Railway Bazaar |
| Travelling by train from London via the Balkans, near and middle East to India, Southeast Asia, Japan, and back through Russia. Stuff I really dream of. | |
| Mikhail Bulgakov | The Master and Margarita |
| The devil appears in Moskov, in various roles, like for instance as a variety magician, with this big black (speaking) cat, and there is Pontius Pilate, and... well, all too bizarre to describe here. I've read too much english/american stuff in the last time and forgot about the specific imaginative power of east european writers. | |
| Paul Theroux | The Two Pillars of Hercules |
| The rocks of Gibraltar and Ceuta in Marocco, according to myth the Two Pillars of Hercules, frame the Street of Gibraltar - the connection between the mediterranean and the atlantic. Paul Theroux travelled from one to the other, but taking the long way along the shore of the Mediterranean. Through war zones and ugly tourist resorts, I got a good picture of all those places which I can match with some of my own experiences in Spain, Italy, Malta, Marocco and Tunesia (but not only with tourist resorts). This is the second book I've read of Theroux, and I now think I want to read them all. | |
| William L. Shirer | This is Berlin |
| W.L. Shirer was an american radio reporter in Berlin during the Nazi period. His almost daily radio broadcasts covering the years 1939 and 1940 (when he left Germany) are published here. All the war details, especially towards the end on the air battles between Germany and England, get a bit tiring, but otherwise it brings you the situation of these years very close. | |
| Herman Melville | Moby Dick |
| Finally I attack this monster of a book. Not so easy. But probably the best book in american literature. | |
| Jacques Berndorf | Eifel Müll |
| My brother is very reliable and gave me the newest volume of crime novels taking place in my home county as a present last Christmas... | |
| Paul Theroux | The Happy Isles of Oceania |
| Can't read enough about the pacific since I've been in Fiji. This book is a must-read for all with a soft spot about that region. Though he is often more on the negative side. Its also obvious that he doesn't like the Japanese and the French at all - at least not with what they're doing in the Pacific. Theroux compares the islands in the pacific with stars in a sky - a universe on its own. As I've visited Fiji and tropical Queensland (so far...), I can only judge right for the chapters dealing with these spots - and though I haven't made that many experiences like Theroux, I did recognize it all. Great book. | |
| Isabella Tree | Islands in the Clouds |
| Subtitled "Travels in the Highlands of New Guinea", this was quite an exciting report of some partly very dangerous travels through Papua New Guinea and also to the indonesian half west of 141 East longitude. That Fiji trip made me longing even more for the Pacific, and I read this book in one go. Next time I'm in Cairns I should make a trip to there... | |
| Norbert Casteret | Ten years under the earth |
| Norbert Casteret is a french pioneer of cave exploration and cave archeology. These are some caving memoirs. | |
| Hunter S. Thompson | Generation of Swine |
| Society and american politics in the 80s. Full of hate and disrepect. And truth, apparently. So just Hunter S. Thompson like. | |
| John Steinbeck | East of Eden |
| There's much more to it than the movie with James Dean. | |
| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Die Leiden des jungen Werter |
| The extreme up and downs of love.... | |
| HH The Dalai Lama | Freedom In Exile |
| Updated autobiography. Once again he gives a good example in not hating 'enemies' (in this case, the chinese) but seeing the (eventually misled) human being in them. | |
| Truman Capote | In Cold Blood |
| About a crime, the psychology of the murderers, and the solution. It actually happend. A melt of fiction telling and journalistic style. | |
| Aung San Suu Kyi | Freedom From Fear |
| A collection of writings about burmese history, politics etc. by the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize Winner. I don't know anything about Burma, so I became curious. | |
| Bill Napier | Revelation |
| Second novel of my office mate. Really great thriller. Background: an armenian scientist who was involved in building the bomb in Los Alamos found another energy source which could be transformed into a super bomb possibly wiping out whole mankind - buzzwords: zero point energy and the casimir effect (for those who remember quantum physics). He kept this secret for himself - but it is bound to be uncovered now in some rediscovered old documents. Won't tell no more. | |
| John Stieber | Against the Odds |
| WWII memoirs of a german who lived (and meanwhile lives again) in Ireland, but happened to be in high school in Germany at the time the war broke out. | |
| HH The Dalai Lama | Ancient Wisdom, Modern World - Ethics for a new |
| millennium The point of this book is not just to read it, but to live it! | |
| Lewis Caroll | Alice's Adventures in Wonderland |
| Somebody was suspicious and asked me whether I want to have kids in the very near future. But this one was really for myself... | |
| Bill Napier | Nemesis |
| Finally, more than 1.5 years after publication, I read the first novel written by my office mate. | |
| Paul Stump | Digital Gothic - A critical discography of Tangerine Dream |
| History and discography of my favourite band, covers the period from the 60s to 1996. The history section is informative and offers a few nice anecdotes, although a couple of partly embarassing errors sneaked in. The so-called 'critical' discography section, however, reveals that the author is not a musician or music scientist at all (in case he actually is, which I don't know, he for sure does not work as a music scientist here) but merely a writer. Nowhere you will find an objective, scientific analysis of TD's work. Instead you are bombarded with the author's opinion expressed in a lot of 'exotic' adjectives (I'm not a native english speaker, but I read a lot in english and rarely had to reference in the dictionary that much). The discography part of the book reads like mailing list postings and is mostly not worth to be printed on paper. | |
| HH The Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler | The Art of Happiness |
| I wonder whether anybody could be more qualified. | |
| Bede Griffiths | The Marriage of East and West |
| What the west has lost and tries to regain but was always intuitively present in the East | |
| Plato | Gorgias |
| A workshop on Plato's 'Gorgias' made me finally read all that stuff rather than to read /about/ it. | |
| J.D. Salinger | The Catcher in the Rye |
| Re-discovering a cool book we read at school. At that time I didn't care much about it. Didn't care about anything what happened at school, if you want to know the truth. Not that I really matched that Holden Caulfield guy, but still... I remember we had an exam on that novel in which we had to describe Holden's sex life. I even missed this one. I wasn't in the mood... | |
| Doris Lessing | African Laughter |
| First step in my preparations for an intended travel through the south of Africa. They'll have a solar eclipse on my birthday in 2001. Hope I can get there. | |
| Osho | Finger Pointing to the Moon - Discourses on the Adhyatma Upanishad |
| Read in here every now and then for some real enlightenment. Why oh why did they never tell us this at school? We've been so loaded with western culture. They gave a damn on the east. | |
| Woody Allen | Complete Prose |
| About one laugh per line - absolutely brilliant and Woody Allen like. quotes: well, I'd love to reproduce the best quotes, but that would mean to copy the whole book here which would bring me into trouble. | |
| Diane di Prima | Memoirs of a beatnik |
| Praised by the New York Times as 'a unique opportunity to view the beat generation ... through a woman's eyes', however, to 95% merely a porn novel - i.e. very very detailed description of all the sex she had at that time. Yuk - herself with Ginsberg and Keroauc, and those two... ah, no, not here. | |
| Jacques Berndorf | Eifel Sturm |
| yet another crime novel from my home county. This time even from my home town - and my home village gets a mention, too! Read this lazying in a hammock on Waya Island, Yasawa group, Fiji. Great to read from home while you're on the other side of the globe. | |
| ...several... |
San Francisco - The Rough Guide Lonely Planet - Fiji |
| yes - I'm off for a great Xmas and millenium trip. | |
| F. Scott Fitzgerald | The Great Gatsby |
| that old sport | |
| Sheck Exley | Caverns Measureless to Man |
| Memoirs of a cave diver. Makes me shiver. The book is sort of unfinished because Sheck Exley died on a cave dive - like so many other cave divers. | |
| Ken Kesey | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest |
| Even if you know the great movie adaption by heart, I can still very much recommend to read this book. | |
| Thomas Mann | Der Tod in Venedig |
| I can't think of any other author whose language comes as close to the beauty of the one of Thomas Mann. I read this loud for maximum enjoyment. The best reason to learn german. | |
| Hunter S. Thompson | The Rum Diary |
| Autobiographic novel about a journalist of a shabby american newspaper on Puerto Rico. Amusing, but thats it. | |
| Fynn | Mr. God, this is Anna |
| Makes you think, and love. | |
| Eugen Herrigel | Zen in the Art of Archery |
| So /thats/ what archery is all about! Maybe I should pick up fencing again... | |
| Richard Bach | Illusions - The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah |
| Similar to /Jonathan Livingston Seagull/ in its message. | |
| Richard Bach | Jonathan Livingston Seagull |
| I'm about learning to fly... | |
| Albert Camus | Die Pest (La Peste) |
| Italo Calvino | Herr Palomar |
| Lots of little philosophical contemplations about all sorts of little daily things. And if you don't understand them, there is at least a wonderful languague to enjoy. | |
| William Styron | Darkness Visible |
| William Styron talks about his depression which almost led him to commit suicide in the mid 80s. It describes the situation very well, and by its nature will be incomprehensible to those who have never been in such a situation. | |
| Hunter S. Thompson | The Proud Highway |
| Mostly letters by the american journalist and writer Hunter S. Thompson. Very eloquent. But I'm not sure whether I like that guy. | |
| Italo Calvino | Das Gedächtnis der Welten: Cosmicomics (Cosmicomiche vecchie e nuove) |
| Both funny and philosophical stories set throughout all periods of the formation of the universe, earth, and life on earth. | |
| Jochen Bochenski | Wege zum philosophischen Denken |
| Manuskript of a radio series held in the 60s (I guess) telling you briefly and accurately what (western) philosophy is and has been concerned about. Great introduction. Read it several times, first time at school. | |
| Nagib Machfus | Die Midaq-Gasse (Zuqaq al-Midaqq) |
| Egyptian Literature Nobel Prize winner 1988 - projection of life in general into the microcosmos of the lives of people in some street in the Cairo of the mid 40s. | |
| Brigitte Hamann | Elisabeth - Kaiserin wider Willen |
| Biography of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, cult figure under her nickname 'Sisi', at least since the kitsch movies with Romy Schneider, and quite influential in politics in times. Interesting life. And, of course, loads of historical background. The cult remains: Walking through Vienna in Dec./Jan. 1998/99, Sisi was staring at me from huge posters and exhibition adverts just everywhere in the city. Well, and it had effect: I went to the exhibits and bought that book... | |
| Irina Pantaeva | Siberian Dream |
| Although there are three postcards showing Amber Valetta, Nadja Auermann and Eva Herzigova in my kitchen (souvenirs from a Peter Lindbergh exhibition in Vienna), I'm not paying attention to today's absurd 'beauty' cult. The first three quarters of the memoirs of the model Irina Panteava, however, were very interesting to read because she grew up in Sibera and started her career in a stubborn communist environment and during the times of the revolutionary Gorbatchev and early Yeltsin periods. Sometimes really shocking. | |
| Doris Lessing | The Grass is Singing |
| First novel of Doris Lessing. | |
| Henry Ashby Turner Jr. | Hitler's 30 days to power: January 1933 |
| How this actually started - detailled description of the intrigues of and around Hindenburg, Schleicher, Papen and Hitler, and the fatal unexpected outcome. | |
| Hans Otto Meissner | Inseln der Südsee |
| Found this one in my mother's bookshelf: travel literature about the pacific and all those places I want to visit at some stage. I've travelled a bit in Chile and Australia, now I'm longing for everything inbetween - as far as it is not radioactively contaminated. Most shocking chapter in this book about an island several hundred kilometers away from the Mururoa atoll, a french nuclear 'playground'. People and animals there all suffer from cancer. | |
| Philip K. Dick | Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? |
| I don't read SF anymore - it started to bore me (especially Arthur C. Clarke or Asimov or similar stuff only science nerds can appreciate) - with very very few exceptions (see the Strugatzkis below), but Philip K. Dick is the big exception. I'm now rediscovering him and finally read his stuff in the english original. | |
| Günter Grass | Die Blechtrommel |
| Story of Oskar, who at the age of 3 decided not to grow anymore. He claims to be fully aware of himself already at birth, and all left to do is to proove himself in life. He 'grows up' (in lack of another word...) in Gdansk/Danzig in the 30s, at that time still german, during the Nazi period and the war, escapes to the Rhineland where he spends the postwar period. Its not about politics but about life in those days from his particular point of view. A 'classic modern' german novel, one of the few which get translated into english (of course, I read the original). | |
| Jacques Berndorf | Eifel Jagd |
| 8th volume in the series of Eifel crime novels, which I probably only read because I grew up in the Eifel. | |
| Arkadi and Boris Strugatski | Die häßlichen Schwäne (Gadkie Lebedie) |
| Russian science fiction - good stuff. | |
| Brigitte Muir | The Wind in my Hair |
| Brigitte Muir (born in Belgium, close to where I'm from) is the first australian (married an australian) who climbed the seven summits - the highest mountain on each continent. This is her story about her life as a mountaineerer. Bought this book in Cairns (Austraila, tropical Queensland). I tend to read about places completely opposite to the place I am at the moment. When I was in the north chilenian desert, I read about the South Pole... | |
| Jacques Berndorf | Eifel Rally |
| 7th volume in the series of Eifel crime novels. | |
| Dea Birkett | Serpent in Paradise |
| And I thought I'm the only one who is a bit crazy after Pitcairn island. No, there is a whole bunch of people who are. Dea Birkett made a dream come true and lived there for a while. Pitcairn is a lonely island in the south pacific where the Bounty mutineers settled together with some tahitian women (who not all followed voluntarily). All Pitcairn inhabitants are their descendants, the Pitcairn language is a mixture of (old) english and (old) tahitian. | |
| Kevin Toolis | Rebel Hearts |
| about the IRA. | |
| Jack Keroauc | On The Road |
| A classic I simply had to read at some stage. I like driving cars over long distances, so I really enjoyed this novel. And it is quite clear that I will travel the US by car in the near future. Which does not make me a 'beatnik', for sure. I'd hate myself discovering me doing some sort of 'beatnik tourism' and rent a place at Big Sur just for sightseeing. | |
| Stephan Aust | Der Baader Meinhoff Komplex |
| Said to be the ultimate book about the Baader Meinhoff gang, which I cannot judge as it is the only book about this topic I've read, but for sure it gave me a lot of insight about that special chapter in german history. | |
| Eamon Collins | Killing Rage |
| About the IRA from a former member. The author was killed because of this book. | |
| Helen Fielding | Bridget Jones' Diary |
| Also men can identify with that. At least I can. I found it to be a funny novel, though one of my best female friends condemned it as a stupid 'girlie' novel. | |
| Doris Lessing | Walking in the Shade |
| Finally volume 2 of the autobiography of my favourite british writer. In fact I much prefer to read her non-fiction books. | |
| James Joyce | Dubliners |
| Cool - but I do not always get the point of these short stories. | |
| Franz Kafka | Die Verwandlung |
| Depressing if you happen to identify yourself with Kafka's characters... | |
| Heinrich Böll | Gruppenbild mit Dame |
| A picture of postwar german society, very well written, a pleasure to devour this book. | |
| Heinrich Böll | Ansichten eines Clowns |
| Takes place in the 60s in Bonn. I lived in Bonn during the 80s and 90s, and I thought I recognized some of those terrible postwar german sectarian characters... | |
| Dava Sobel | Längengrad (Longitude) |
| Bestselling story of John Harrison, a clockmaker who solved the navigational problem on how to determine the accurate position on sea. | |
| Peter Høeg | Fräullein Smillas Gespür für Schnee (Frøken Smillas førnemmelse for sne) |
| Thanks to Jelena for good book presents. | |
| Liam O'Flaherty | Skerrett |
| Cool drama set on Aran Island. One of the less famous irish classic writers. | |
| Gerald Keegan | Famine Diary |
| Want to get a picture of the great irish famine of 1847 and the mass exodus of the irish to America/Canada, but you don't want to read 1000+ pages of dead facts? This handy book may be the solution. | |
| Roddy Doyle | The Commitments / The Snapper / The Van |
| I lived in Ireland already for two years, so was more than settled and knew the Irish and their accent quite well, when I read this trilogy. | |
| Simone de Beauvoir | Sie kam und blieb (L'Invitee) |
| Her first novel, full of relationship problems, and a bit tedious to read. | |
| Graham Greene | Our Man in Havanna |
| Story about a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havanna (before the revolution) who spices up his boring life by becoming a spy for western secret services - and since life stays boring, makes up fake reports about a cuban weapons base with blueprints based on vacuum cleaner designs. Graham Greene is a great story teller. | |
| Alfred Döblin | Berlin Alexanderplatz |
| What Joyce's 'Ulysses' is for Dublin is 'Berlin Alexanderplatz' for Berlin - and both novels were written at the same time. It is Joyce who took all the fame. After all we live in an english speaking world. | |
| Noam Chomsky | Class and Warfare |
| Wanna be informed? I mean, /really/ informed? | |
| Neil Postman | Amusing Ourselves to Death |
| On the effect of TV on our culture. I abandoned television from my life some years ago, and I knew I do better! Its not that TV 'harms' us on purpose, but TV requires a certain form of delivering messages towards pure entertainment - even information turns into 'infotainment'. In the end you are numb towards anything without entertainment, as to pure information, and life becomes fast... very fast. | |
| Isabelle Allende | Das Geisterhaus (La Casa de Los Espiritus) |
| Huge epic chilenian family saga - great stuff. Forget the movie adaption! | |
| Ingo Hasselbach | Führer-Ex |
| Shocking report of a former high-ranked german Neo-Nazi, backdrop mostly the time during german reunification. | |
| Harry Wilde | Rosa Luxemburg |
| Another 2nd hand bookshop bargain, biography of Rosa Luxemburg, with many letters. | |
| Audrey Salkeld | A Portrait of Leni Riefenstahl |
| I had to read this. I thought I need an independent view on her life, but it did not add much to her memoirs. | |
| Leni Riefenstahl | A Memoir (Memoiren) |
| Kind of a random purchase from a second hand bookshop in Belfast, and it happened to become one of the most thrilling books I've ever read, about a very thrilling life. There were times I thought I'm to old for some things at the age of 30, but this woman started scuba diving at the age of 72. | |
| Doris Lessing | Unter der Haut (Under my Skin) |
| I love to read people's memoirs, if they are honest, and especially of people I admire like Doris Lessing. | |
| Aziz Nezin | Der einzige Weg (Tek Yol) |
| Aziz Nezin is a turkish author. Tek Yol is a funny novel about a guy who is cheating his way through life. Very amusing. | |
| Ian Banks | The Wasp Factory |
| Hmm... when I came to Ireland, friends around me were reading a lot of Ian Banks, both Science Fiction and ordinary fiction. I thought to give it a try and bought a rather slim novel. I was told that this one could turn me off... well, it was weird enough, but cool. | |
| T.C. Boyle | World's End |
| Monster of a novel. Monstrous things happening. And very funny. | |
| Harry Mulisch | Die Entdeckung des Himmels (De ontdekking van de hemel) |
| Story about the friendship of a dutch astrophysicist and a politician, their son (?!), a lot of weird things, and some divine intervention. | |
| T.C. Boyle | Grün ist die Hoffnung (Budding Prospects) |
| Story about some guys who secretely try to grow marihuana big style in northern california, and into what sort of problems they maneuvre themselves. Very funny. | |
| Heinrich Mann | Professor Unrat |
| You may know the famous movie adaption with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings, called 'Der blaue Engel' ('The Blue Angel'). | |
|
created during a clouded night at the NOT, La Palma, 1996 - updated continuously |
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