All About Books discussion

While my reading has slowed down somewhat drastically last year due to a whole bunch of circumstances, my appetite for books and bookstores unfortunately hasn't. You can guess the result: My bookshelf is about to collapse on itself. I don't think I can read them all this year, but if I can make that mountain look more like a hill I shall be very satisfied :)

An online Random Number Generator will be my partner in crime or rather decision aid if I get lost in trying to choose, which is why I will number them.

Fiction
1. All That Is by James Salter
2. Fathers and Sons by by Ivan Turgenev
3. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
4.Das Büro: Direktor Beerta by J.J. Voskuil
5. Die Zeitwaage by Lutz Seiler
6. The Bridge over the Drina by Ivo Andrić
7. The Mattress House by Paulus Hochgatterer
8. Sommerstück by Christa Wolf
9. Fremde Signale: Roman by Katharina Faber
10. Why We Took the Car by Wolfgang Herrndorf
11. Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
12. Palace of Desire by Naguib Mahfouz
13. Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz
14. Butcher's Crossing by John Williams
15. A Climate of Fear by Fred Vargas
16. Das perfekte Leben des William Sidis by Morten Brask
17. Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marías
18. Sturz durch alle Spiegel : eine Bestandsaufnahme by Ursula Priess
19. The Room by Jonas Karlsson
20. Du sagst es by Connie Palmen
21. Der Pfau by Isabel Bogdan
22. Everything You Need by A.L. Kennedy
23. A Goat's Song by Dermot Healy ✔
24. Ransom by David Malouf
25. Frohburg. Roman by by Guntram Vesper
26. Her Lover by Albert Cohen
27. Selected Stories by Kjell Askildsen
28. Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories by Edith Pearlman
29. Der Atem der Vögel by Klaus Böldl
30. The Berlin Stories: The Last of Mr Norris/Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
31. Year of the Drought by Roland Buti
32. Running Away by Jean-Philippe Toussaint ✔
33. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
34. Stier by Ralf Rothmann
35. Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
36. Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
37. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
38. Paradiso by José Lezama Lima
39. Die Kieferninseln by Marion Poschmann
40. Exile by Jakob Ejersbo
41. Revolution by Jakob Ejersbo
42. Liberty by Jakob Ejersbo
43. Landgericht by Ursula Krechel
44. Point Omega by Don DeLillo
45. Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
46. Mariaschwarz by Heinrich Steinfest
47. Strange Loyalties by William McIlvanney
48. Die Abenteuer des Joel Spazierer by Michael Köhlmeier
49. The Accidental by Ali Smith
50. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
51. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
52. Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
53. Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
54. The Explosion Chronicles by Yan Lianke
55. The Angel of History by Rabih Alameddine
56. Christodora by Tim Murphy
57. The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley
58. Widerfahrnis by Bodo Kirchhoff
59. Drehtür: Roman by Katja Lange-Müller
60. Am Rand by Hans Platzgumer
61. Hool by Philipp Winkler ✔
62. Die Erziehung des Mannes by Michael Kumpfmüller
63. Days Without End by Sebastian Barry
64. The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
65. Bright Air Black by David Vann
66. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
67. History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
68. Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
69. The White City by Karolina Ramqvist
70. Serious Sweet by A.L. Kennedy
71. Man in the Holocene by Max Frisch
72. Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
73. Bullet Park by John Cheever

Nonfiction
1. In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire by Tom Holland
2. A Place in the Country by W.G. Sebald
3. Über die Dichter by Elias Canetti
4. Here and Now: Letters 2008-2011 by Paul Auster & J.M. Coetzee
5. From the Berlin Journal by Max Frisch
6. Arbeit und Struktur by Wolfgang Herrndorf
7. Italian Journey by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8. Nahaufnahme Michael Haneke: Gespräche mit Thomas Assheuer by Thomas Assheuer
9. Ahnen - Ein Zeitreisetagebuch by Anne Weber
10. And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos by John Berger
11. Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett by James Knowlson
12. Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
13. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault
14. Der Briefwechsel 1964 - 1983 by Max Frisch & Uwe Johnson
15. The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art by Arthur C. Danto
16. Buch gegen den Tod by Elias Canetti
17. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann
18. Das Wilde und die Ordnung: Zur deutschen Literatur by Peter von Matt
19. The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön
20. The Foundations of Buddhism by Rupert Gethin
21. Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver
22. The Novel: A Biography by Michael Schmidt
23. Ach, diese Lücke, diese entsetzliche Lücke by Joachim Meyerhoff
24. Iron Curtain: The Crushing Of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum
25. Moscow, 1937 by Karl Schlögel
26. Der Vorhang geht auf: Das Ende der Diktaturen in Osteuropa by György Dalos
27. Der große Plan: Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR 1949-1961 by Stefan Wolle
28. Aufbruch nach Utopia: Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR 1961-1971 by Stefan Wolle
29. Deutschlands Wiederkehr by Peter Bende
30. Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953-1975 by Hannah Arendt

Poetry
1. Come and See by Fanny Howe
2. The Weight of Oranges / Miners Pond / Skin Divers: Poems by Anne Michaels
3. Nox by Anne Carson
4. Die Dichtungen by Georg Trakl
5. The Interior Landscape: Classical Tamil Love Poems by A.K. Ramanujan
6. The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
7. Aria by Sarah Holland-Batt
8. Gedichte. Aus dem Russischen übertragen von Paul Celan by Osip Mandelstam
9. On the Tracks of Wild Game by Tomaž Šalamun
10. Nachbarschaft by Johannes Bobrowski
11. Red Doc> by Anne Carson
12. Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann by Ingeborg Bachmann
13. Songs of Exile by Bänoo Zan
14. Take Nothing With You by Sarah V. Schweig
15. Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow by Ted Hughes

Good luck with reducing your mountain Jenny!

Thank you! I think a hammock in the sun and lots of free time might do the trick.

Jenny wrote: "Thank you! I think a hammock in the sun and lots of free time might do the trick."

Sounds like a lovely plan ;)

I guess the fact that it took nearly two days to write them all down tells me I really have some catching up to do ;)

Good idea with the random number generator, Jenny! I may well try that too as it often takes me ages to pick my next book!

The random number generator sounds like a good idea Jenny. I wish you luck in reducing your pile.

Thanks guys! I've also just realized GR gives you the option of ordering your TBR or any shelf for that matter by number which would help with picking at random. Here's to discovering a basic function of GR 7 years after joining LOL

I love the ordering feature for the to-read shelf but a word of warning based on personal experience — you can end up playing with it for a long time instead of actually reading a book!

LOL, you describe excactly what happened to me last week ;)

I am going to use this thread also to document the books I've read each month, so here's April. I am realizing my month has a lot of crime in audio format. My fall back strategy when in a reading slump.

April

1. The Cruellest Month by Louis Penny 4 *
The 4th of the Inspector Gamache novels that I now - thank you Petra! - find myself completely addicted to. I actually have to force myself to not just consume them one after another.
This one is a bit of a departure as it leaves the background of Three Pines and only has a few of the regular characters, but I did enjoy this one nevertheless. Penny's books remind me a tiny bit of Fred Vargas in their feel good character (strange word to use for a crime novel) and subtle quirkiness.

2. The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny 4 *
Nr. 5 in the series. I just couldn't help it. This one is again set in Three Pines and the most complex of the series so far. Having gotten so attached to all the characters this one delivers a bit of a blow. As a side note: I think for Ruth the poet alone it's worth it to read these books. I love her (though I wouldn't want her to cook dinner for me, ever.)

3. Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride 3.5 *
I read this one in order to actively stop my Louise Penny streak, in fear of running out of books too soon.
Very different in feel, very Scottish, dark as....well very dark, and at times with description of cruelties I found hard if not impossible to stomach. However: I also hardly ever laughed as much when reading a mystery. Very dry humour, the Scottish variety. I thought the plot would have benefited greatly from the weeding out of some unnecessary side plots, but as I understood this was his debut novel, so I am interested to see whether things are as convoluted in his later mysteries as well.
I will definitely read more by Stuart MacBride, but please let there be no more murdered small children. Please.

4. Running Away by Jean-Philippe Toussaint 3.5 *
MOUNT TBR
The official end of my reading slump and a very confusing end at that. My short review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

5. At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen 4*
It's my second Matthiessen after Shadow Country which I thought was brilliant. 'At Play...' didn't wow me quite as much, but it is still a very good, albeit bleak book. Whores, missionaries, mercenaries and a native tribe in a god-forsaken outpost in the South American jungle. I always struggle a little at first getting into his books, but I think that's because the world he invites the reader into is so inhospitable, you kind of want to turn around and run, getting the idea very early on that this is not going to be a happy read in any way. Indeed the tragedy is of almost shakespearean proportian, but what really amazes me every single time is Matthiessen's humanity. He gets you to empathize with even his most flawed characters. There's no cynicism about the human condition à la Herman Koch but his books don't reflect much hope for human kind either.

6. The Vegetarian by by Han Kang 4*
Very interesting book about the struggle for autonomy in a completely encroaching? personal environment and society, when the only way to escape is by self-dissolution.

7. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi 5*
My favourite this month. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

8. So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood by Patrick Modiano 4*
My second Modiano. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

9. Hool by Philipp Winkler 4*
MOUNT TBR
My (German) review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

10. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton DNF
I couldn't finish this one. I explained why here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I love Louise Penny's Three Pines series! And they keep getting better as you go so you have some fun in store :)

Jenny, you have some very interesting books on your list! I'll be especially interested in knowing what you think about Buch gegen den Tod when you get to it. Elias Canetti is my favorite author and I've read everything by him, but I'm hesitant to read this book. I browsed through it at the bookshop and it seemed very interesting, but I'm sort of worried that it might be a collection of thoughts which were previously published in his other books. Moreover, I don't remember who said that "if you love Canetti, you don't need to read another word except the books he published when living", or something along those lines. I read Party in the Blitz and hated it - I don't want to be let down a second time.

Leslie wrote: "I love Louise Penny's Three Pines series! And they keep getting better as you go so you have some fun in store :)"

Leslie, I noticed you had started them too, are you finished already?
And: is she still writing more? LOL, questions of an addict! Did you ever read anything by Fred Vargas ? I wonder whether you'd maybe like her too. I think of her a little as the French version of Louise Penny, or the other way around. Anyhow, her's are possibly even a little more quirky, but similar,

Marina wrote: "Jenny, you have some very interesting books on your list! I'll be especially interested in knowing what you think about Buch gegen den Tod when you get to it.

I 'love Canetti! In fact in my mid-twenties I decided that if I ever had a child I'd name it 'Elias' regardless of gender! Luckily times have changed ;) I haven't nearly read all by him but his The Memoirs of Elias Canetti: The Tongue Set Free/The Torch in My Ear/The Play of the Eyes
belong to my very favourite pages of written words ever.

Both of the books on the list I received as gifts, I will let you know what I think. The one I would really like to read next though is Crowds and Power. I just checked your review and google translated it, and ta taaaa!! to my enourmous surpise the result was quite good! Either google translate has improved, or Italian lends itself better to a German translation due to grammar. Anyhow, I enjoyed reading it and will gather all my 'neuroni' to prepare for Canetti sometime soon. ;)

I started reading them in 2013 at the recommendation of my mother and have read them all now. I don't know if she will be writing more as the latest one (Glass Houses) wraps up things but we can hope!

I haven't read any Vargas yet but I bought The Chalk Circle Man in January. I'll have to move it up on my TBR list!

Jenny, my heart aches. I'm so sorry to know that the results of that Google translation were quite good. I'm a translator, I knew I was going to lose my job in favor of a robot eventually. (Just kidding, hey!)

I'm glad you liked Canetti's autobiography. Yes, you really should read Crowds and Power, it's an enormously interesting book - I should re-read it myself one day. I also recommend Auto-da-Fé, which is probably my favorite book of all times. You might also want to give The Human Province a try. Okay, I see I'm recommending most of his prose here, I should probably stop :D

The thing is, I wrote both my bachelor's and my master's dissertation on his work, so I get pretty emotional. I wrote about Komödie der Eitelkeit. Drama in drei Teilen and Auto-da-Fé. I stumbled upon the former while on a trip to Salzburg, when I noticed a cheap copy in a bookshop - and then I simply couldn't stop reading his books!

Marina, no need for heart palpatations just yet, what google produced was recognizably German and it didn't make me laugh tears, so it felt like a major departure from the last time I employed it's translator for a longer text. ;) I did however often think that no one needs Dada poets when one has google translate.

I have my hungry eyes on all the books by Canetti you've mentioned. However: if you tempt me too convincingly I shall never turn that mountain of unread books in my living room into a hill!

I can totally relate to the emotional attachement, I wrote my A-Level exams in German on Homo Faber by Frisch which is not nearly as much of an investment in time and energy as a dissertation, but I feel like it's now inseparably connected to this time of my life somehow and my way of seeing the world at the time if that makes sense.
Is it too nosy to ask what your dissertation was on exactly?

Leslie wrote: "I started reading them in 2013 at the recommendation of my mother and have read them all now. I don't know if she will be writing more as the latest one (Glass Houses) wraps up thin..."

Let's hope then! I read a lot of Vargas' mysteries and I think I read' The Chalk Circle Man' but I didn't rate it here, so I am now not sure whether to trust my memory or GR. I shall investigate.

May

1. Child of All Nations by Irmgard Keun
I love Irmgard Keun, but listening to the audio didn't really do the book many favours. Here's my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Jenny wrote: "Marina, no need for heart palpatations just yet, what google produced was recognizably German and it didn't make me laugh tears, so it felt like a major departure from the last time I employed it's..."

Lol, you made me laugh with that about the Dada poets!

You're not nosy at all - my dissertation was about fire as a symbol for crowds (as in, Crowds and Power) in Auto-da-Fé. It actually was much less pretentious than it sounds - I was just a University student after all, so it was nothing groundbreaking.

Marina, it doesn't sound pretentious at all, though now I kind of want to re-read Auto-da-Fé and we can't have that, considering the list up there ;)
It gives the end even more weight, considering the rigid man Klien is, clinging to his individuality so much. Slightly hilarious thought actually, that a man like that would willfully destroy the bounderies that contain his 'Self' and get so inseparably mixed up with the world.