So, I still haven’t found the perfect solution for this blog, but since it’s already the end of October (wtf…) and I have so many books left to write about, I will for now try to pair similiar books, or similar topics together. This time is an American novel about skinheads and a German one about Neonazis. What a fun topic, right?

American Skin is about a Alex, a young boy that by accident enters the Skinhead scene in Chicago after losing his home. The skins soon become their new family and and they help each other out, also using violence, which brings Alex to jail. The skins are anti-Nazi and often have fights with a rival skin gang that is very much into the Nazi scene. The book was interesting in so far as I had no idea that skinheads do not equal Nazis, because being a German, it kind of does. But as I googled after reading the book, skins are young people with a working class environment and they welcomed almost everyone. It was only in the 90s that it got mixed up with neo-Nazis. Still, I felt very bewildered reading it. The gang leader of the rival gang also ends up in jail, where he gets a tattoo of the I think a Swastika on his forehead. For me, it’s always a bit difficult to understand that in other countries in the world, you can actually do things like this (if that’s what floats your goat….) and don’t face any legal consequences for it. In Germany, you would go to jail (or continue to be there if you already were) because it’s a forbidden symbol. I remember watching American History X as a child (and the blurb on this book says that the book inspired the movie a great deal, but I’m not sure if that’s true) and feeling so confused and somewhat sick about people just showing of their Nazi symbols.

This aside, the book was really interesting to read and quite the page turner. If you are interested into topics like this, I can really recommend it.

The second book is by Peter Richter, telling the story about him and his friends and how they experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the years afterwards (hence the title). Now, I did not get most of the GDR references, while officially born a citizen of the GDR, I must say, I don’t have any memories of this country and most of the things I know are stories from my family or older friends. The second part, however, I understood better, because I actually have memories of that. I have vivid memories of neo-Nazis running around in our village, and of my brother being scared because he had long hair and was/is left (and as he later told me, he was beaten up quite often). It’s a bit sad that the author cannot explain why they all ‚appeared‘ so suddenly, probably because he can’t, but I never really understood it. Granted, they probably had that mindset before already, but how did they all just look the same and value the same things all of a sudden. If you have an idea, let me know, I’m really interested in it. The passages were hard to read, the author tells how he was beaten up but also beat up Nazis – to be honest, it sounded like war or something, and I guess it was.

He has a sentence in the book that I found very strong. The setting is right after the collapse of the GDR and how the demonstrations, once peacefully, were now right-winged people against left-winged people. Here it is:

Rightists and Leftists, this was what it was called now, and we were, whether we liked it or not, the Leftists simply because the other ones were the Rightists. (page 210, own translation)

I find this sentence so strong, because this has never stopped being true. We are so quick labeling people Rightists or Leftists, just because they have a different opinion then we do. If you think that Germany has to take in refugees? Boooooom, you must be leftist. You think that taking refugees in is good, but not too many please? Please move to the right, because you must be a Nazi. With this thinking in black and white categories however, we just intensify the debate and the gap in our society. The old women worrying about refugees coming to her village is definitely simple-minded and overreacting, but is she a Rightist, a Nazi? I don’t think so. The young man worrying about increasing rent in Berlin who thinks that real estate moguls should take responsibility and not raise rents whenever they can? Is he a Leftists? I do not think so. Now, don’t get me wrong. If it talks like a Nazi, acts like a Nazi, thinks like a Nazi and behaves like a Nazi – it is a Nazi (looking at you Bernd Höcke and other AfD members). But maybe we should be more careful with labeling people something just because they disagree with us. That’s all I’m saying.

So, all in all, two interesting books, two different countries, and yet, two similar topics.

On a personal note:

I haven’t been feeling good lately (mentally as well as physically) and today I decided to do something nice for me and went for a very long walk around the lake near my neighborhood. I picked a nice tree, sat down, looked at the water, the leaves falling, the dragon flies flying around, the sun’s reflection in the water and I felt so peaceful and at ease. I understood once again how important it is to do something good for yourself, especially when times are hard. I hope that I will remember this and will build in things like this more often. In the end, you have to prioritize yourself, right?

Oh, how I have been waiting for this to come out! I went to one of the English book shops in Berlin on Monday because I wanted to get a different book, and there it was! Normally, it takes a few weeks for English books to make the way to the German English book shops, so I was really happy when I saw it. I am a big fan of Queer Eye and Gay of Thrones but especially Jonathan’s podcast Getting Curious because Jonathan has so interesting guests there, I always learn so much listening to it. Therefore, when the book got announced, I knew I had to get it.

I started this book yesterday and finished it today, it’s a book you can read quite fast and really, Jonathan writes as he speaks, so I could not help but have his voice in my head the entire time. As usually, I won’t spoil too much of the contents because I want you all to read it, so to sum it up, it’s his story from growing up as a chubby gay kid (his words) all the way to how he got his role in Queer Eye and how it changed his life with all the good and the bad (but mostly the bad) in between. This includes, for example, bullying, fighting for what you love, drug abuse and finding your way (any more than that would be a spoiler, I fear…) This book seriously made me laugh, for example when he summed up a bad event with stating that he is basically a Kelly Clarkson song (ain’t we all at times?), cry and seriously freak out when he told the toe nail story. Ughgghgh…..!!! As a girl with long natural finger nails, stuff like that is hitting hard. I remember watching this Kevin Bacon movie Stir of Echoes in which the girl (I think she was already dead at that point?) fell down to the ground and her hand hit the floor first and there was this nice shot of her nail bending backwards and I swear, I could feel that pain. Not cute.

Other than that, however, there were so many passages in this book that really had me thinking that were really hitting close to home for me too. He starts the book with talking about his worry that if the people knew all about him, not only the bubbly side but also all the dark, would they still like him and then goes on to tell all the dark things and sums it up with asking again, if you still like him. I do, because I also think that a person is never really just positive or just negative. The person smiling all day might cry him or herself to sleep every single night, the person with the resting bitch face (like me) could be a total animal lover and smile so hard when he or she sees a cat or a dog or… a penguin. Where there’s light, there is darkness. People have more than just one side and one character trait and I think it’s so bad that in our society as it is today, we are said to lock all our negative things away and function, work, smile, consume and repeat. Therefore, seeing how honest he is with the reader felt almost healing in a way.

Another aspect of the book is his realization about the importance of self-love and self-care. I normally don’t do direct quotes, because I don’t want to get legal complaints or anything, but I’ll make an exception for that, because he wrote it so beautifully:

We are all a beautiful jumble of layers, parts, and mixtures of experiences, but my most important part, and in my opinion everyone’s most valuable part, is the one that chooses self-love instead of self-harm in the grand sweeping ways but also the little ways every single day (p. 262)

Although I fully agree, in reality it is so hard to reach this understanding and then actually life by it. The book and his journey makes that very clear too. I must say, I am not a the stage yet in which I choose self-love, I do sabotage myself at times and self-harm myself (and that does not have to mean cutting or anything, we can harm ourselves in many ways). But we all grow, we evolve and we can overcome all of this, the book showed that. He was also honest enough to talk about making a change, then falling back into old bad routines, then changing again. Sometimes you read books about celebrities or self-help books and they make it seem so easy, like ‚do that thing and boom all good‘ and if you fail, you are too weak. But here it’s obvious that it’s a struggle (life is a struggle after all) and that it’s okay as long as you don’t give up.

So as you can see, the book really got me thinking. I have some more topics that resonated with me, but they are too personal for me, so I will not talk about them here.

All in all, I can totally recommend the book, but maybe you should know Jonathan before you read it, otherwise the writing style might confuse you a bit.

On a personal note:

For the first time ever, the book part and this part are kind of connected. Yay! On Wednesday, I went to Leipzig to see Amanda Palmer for her There Will Be No Intermission Tour. I had wanted to see her for almost 15 years now, and I was so happy to finally get the chance. It was said beforehand that it is a ‚therapeutic sitting concert‘ and that’s exactly what it was. She was so raw and honest and fully took us with her to her darkest parts including sexual abuse, abortions and the pressure of being a mother to only name a few. She always told a story before playing a song that was related to that story. Therefore, the songs had a much deeper impact. I especially liked the one I have linked here. For the performance, she played with light and it had such an impact on me that I teared up. I cried at another song as well, but it was probably good that me and my friend shared a bottle of wine before, I would have been one hot mess otherwise.

Anyhow, one of the things she said that really lingered with me was her remarks about the work of the artist. She talked about how people are constantly saying to her that she’s not making anything, that art is not actually a product you produce with a value (I can picture the kind of person that would say shit like that in my head… I am surrounded by them at work a lot). And she theorized that art makes going into the dark and making sense of it. And I think that that’s really true. If artists won’t do that, then who will? It is so important to also tackle that dark topic. Life is more than glittering pop songs. Therefore, I thought that the book and my impressions of the shows are quite matching.

Sorry for the lack of posts, life happened, my mood darkened and I didn’t feel like blogging. But I’m back and still trying to figure out a way to make this more structured.

This week’s book was a present for my last birthday from a dear friend. I had it on my list too, because it sounded so interesting.

The story is about Ida Adler which is the great-grandmother of the author but also and more famously „Dora“ the patient Sigmund Freud wrote about in his study about hysteria. The story is fictional but based on historical facts.

Ida suffered from migraine attacks since her childhood and later from suicidal thoughts and depression. That’s why her father forced her to see Freud. I must say, the scenes with Freud are very weird to read. In one, she is fumbling around with her purse, opening and closing it while she talks and inserting her hand. He interprets this as strong sexual drive just as he interprets almost everything as strong sexual drive… I know that Freud still has a lot of followers, but, are people still thinking that way? Because it got me thinking, I also open and close things when I’m stressed or talking about personal stuff, or click my pen, or fumble with my jacket sleeve, that’s not an indicator for sexual drive, is it? I wonder who I could ask to find an answer to that.

It was also really interesting to read a book set in Austria, my neighboring country, and yet I actually don’t know anything about it which is a shame, maybe I should look into that some more.

I also really liked the style of the book. Her sentences are very short but on point. There is no exaggeration, no meaningless half-sentence. And because of this it’s very easy to read even though Ida’s story is really not easy to digest. She is, probably due to her mental illness, losing almost any person in her life and you just want to shout to her ’no, don’t be so harsh! You will push them away!‘ but it happens. She also has to escape to the US because of the Nazi regime and that’s also a quite intense read.

So, in short, I can totally recommend this book and I’m glad that I got it as a present!

On a personal note:

I cleaned out a drawer today and found old pictures of me (which I found horrible) but also of my friends, my brothers and my cats and my birds. Now I’m sad, because I miss my pets. My pets were the best pets… sigh… I miss you Coco, Kiki, Kitty, Mika and Trixie ❤

I till haven’t figured out how to make this better, but today I’ll get three books of the list. It’s triology time! I got the Hunger Games books from a friend, all three of them, because I had watched the first movie and always wanted to read the books. As it’s YA, it was quite an easy read, I think I finished all three books in less than two weeks. The second one was my least favorite, the third one my favorite.

For those of you who have never heard of either movie nor book, let me summarize the books. The books are set in Panem, basically a dystopian version of North America, that is divided into 13 districts and the Capitol. Every district is in charge of something, e.g. food, or coal. The capitol is very rich while in the districts people are starving. Every year, the capitol is having the Hunger Games, in which a boy and a girl out of every district (except for district 13, because it’s destroyed and a wasteland) get chosen to battle for their district – aka kill all the others until just one person is left alive. The books are written from the point of view of Katniss Everdeen living in District 12. She’s introvert, does lack social skills, hard to approach but a great hunter with the bow. Her childhood friend Gale has a crush on her, just as Peter, the boy who gets chosen. Her little sister is chosen to be in the games, but Katniss volunteers to save her. I will make this very brief now, because lots of contents (three books after all). They enter the arena and their strategy is to pretend that they are lovers, so in the end, both of them are winners of the hunger games – the viewers love it, the President of Panem is pissed. Therefore, they have to enter the arena again in the second book. At the end, the arena gets blown up, Katniss joins the underground trying to topple the government, Peter is a captive of the government. The third books is about saving Peter and toppling the government, with a twist-ending that I will not tell.

The plot itself is nothing too new. Battle Royale already covered the theme of young people having to kill each other for the greater good, and others have too. So, instead of focusing on that, I will tell you about what I liked and disliked about the books.

Let’s start with what I disliked. The weird love triangle. Gale was into Katniss, Peter was into Katniss, Katniss, as described in the books, seems to love neither, actually. For three books she cannot make up her mind if she loves Gale, or Peter, or sees them as friends, or brothers while the two guys hate each other because both are into Katniss (obviously…). It was really annoying. Katniss is described as a very strange and hard to like character, she even annoyed me several times during the course of the books, so why would they all just fall for her that hard? It felt very staged and unreal and I don’t know, I guess it had to be in there, because it’s YA after all, and YA is normally having love themes, but I could have done without that.

What I really liked about the books is that Katniss is so broken beyond compare at the end. I know that sounds weird, but hear me out. Katniss is going through a lot. In the books we find out that her father died in the coal mines, and she loved him a lot. She sacrifices herself to enter the games to protect her sister. She sees people die, she has to kill and fight. She has to pretend to love Peter. President Snow is constantly trying to make her life harder. People in the underground see her as their symbol and she is supposed to live up to that. People close to her die. She has to enter the arena AGAIN. People are plotting things behind her back, leaving her with a lack of trust. Peter is held captive, she is blaming herself for that. The list goes on and on… She is going through so much, and it shows, especially in the third book, she is just broken and done with everything. And I thought that this was the right thing to do. I find it so often that in books or shows the characters go through a lot and then at the end, everything is just cool and good and sunshine. In Stranger Things, for example, Will seems to be the only one who is still having a trauma while the others seem like it didn’t bother them at all. But actually, they should all go see a therapist. I liked that truthful description of Katniss and her demons and the end (SPOILER ALARM) in which she is in the fields observing Peter, whom she married. She is a mother now, but it’s described that she still has nightmars and that she still is not sure if she can actually love. I heard that in the movie, it’s cheesier and seems like she’s happy, but I guess making a movie out of a first-person narrated book is quite hard.

So there you have it, my two cents about the Hunger Games. I would like to watch the remaining movies, but neither Netflix nor Amazon seem to have them. So I guess I’ll have to wait until they are at some point.

On a personal note:

I have sleeping troubles… uuugghhg. For the past week, I woke up at 2 or 3 at night and just could not go back to sleep. Then, I fall back asleep around 5 and have to get up at 6.30 for work. I feel so tired and low on energy the whole day, and I’m also grumpy (sorry if the blog post sounded extra mean today). I don’t know the cause, and I don’t have a cure. So if you have any ideas, let me know!

I slept a bit unwell and feel cranky, so today is just a small entry that leads me down nostalgia street with Fear Street by R.L. Stine, specifically Die Todesparty and Mörderischer Tanz (I could not find the English titles what so ever, sorry about that).

Die Todesparty is about a group of teenager that is in detention on a Saturday at their high school. The group consists of the smart girl that should not be there, the weird sort of criminal kid … basically movie stereotype. One girl falls through a hole down into a tunnel system under the school and as the group tries to save her, they all get stuck down there and now have to find a way out. But … they are not alone!

Mörderischer Tanz is about a group of girls that are all competing for prom queen at the high school, competition breaks out among them, some people die, but, who’s the murderer?

I really cannot summarize more than that. It’s a YA book and if I give away any more, it gives away the whole story. When I grew up, I loved the Fear Street books! I would finish it in less than 2 hours, upsetting my parents because they had just bought them for me and thus trade them with my friends on the school yard. I can recall sleep overs at my friend’s place where we would just read the books together. In short, they mean a lot to me and definitely shaped my taste in reading – I mean I love me some horror, mystery, true crime, thriller (but soooooo many bad ones lately) so when I found them with my roomie at the church flea market (yes, I do love the church flea market), I couldn’t resist and I had to buy them! I must say, even as an adult, they are still so much fun to read. I mean sure, the characters are pretty stereotypcial – the smart girl, the popular girl, the criminal guy, the angry ex etc. but that’s not too bad for me, because I really like the style and the settings (the dialogue is a bit cringy though, but that might be the German translation) and the feeling of nostalgia and coming home in a sense. To this town called Shadyside and the famous street called Fear Street. It just means so much to me and I plan on re-reading more books, if I find them!

It was only a few years back that I found out that he also wrote Goosebumps. I was not a big goosebumps fan because the tv show had some episodes that seriously upset me (looking at you, super creepy ventriloquist’s dummy) but Fear Street has a special place in my heart ❤

On a personal note:

Speaking of crime and all, I am so obsessed with this podcast called My Favorite Murder lately. I had followed them for a while, and listened to episodes here and there, but then I bought their book (other entry to come) and that sparked my interest in listening all 160-ish episodes. Currently at episode 60 and wow, it’s so funny and really makes me crack up at the same time though, listening to all the murders cannot be good for my mind… oh well, oh well.

It’s time for another post about books that I enjoyed, but not quite enough to dedicate a whole post to them.

Also, I still have so many books to write about, I really need to think about a way to structure this blog better. Will think about it during my vacation next week.

As usual, this post does not mean that I disliked the books, only that they weren’t my favorites, although I am certain that they would make other people very very happy.

Good Omen – Neil Gaimann & Terry Prachett

I can already see all three people reading this getting angry. I know, I know. It’s not that I dislike the book, I just expected it to be better given the fact that soooo many of my friends were praising it so hard. But the thing is, if expectations get build up so high, it’s difficult to actually fulfill it. I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed the characters and I will probably watch the Amazon version, because I really want to see how they did it, but after finishing the book, I did not really think about it and I like books that stay with me for a while. Sorry to all Prachett lovers!!!

Mephisto – Klaus Mann

I got this book from my dear friend and it’s one of her favorites, but…. damn I just don’t like the Manns. It was the same dry, dragging, stiff writing style that his father Thomas Mann is using. It felt so hard for me to get through the pages and I should have been intrigued, it’s set in the early 20ths century (check), during the Hitler regime (check), is about a theater actor (check, because I used to do theater), has flaming socialists (check) and yet, and yet… the most interesting thing about the book was the backstory. Maybe this time it would have been better to research about the book before reading it, maybe that would have helped. Mann wrote the book to mock a former friend of mine that became one of the most famous actors in that time because he threw away everything he stood for and basically kissed the right asses. The book was banned for quite a while, so that’s fascinating, but the style, uuuuuugh, I just couldn’t.

When We Were Orphans – Kazuo Ishiguru

Why, oh why. I absolutely adored The Remains of The Day, it was one of my favorite books of that year. Therefore, I had my hopes up high for this, but somehow, it didn’t live up to it. Maybe (most likely) because I am not a big fan of crime novels. It was interesting to get to know this character with his upbringing in Shanghai and his Japanese friend Akira (with the best Jenglish I’ve read in a while), but the crime case about his missing parents was a bit boring to me (I could have done with his recounts only) and the conclusion was a bit… meh. But if you like crime novels, you might be seeing that totally different, which is also cool!

Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein – Nudge

This book obviously did not get me overly excited because it’s a non fiction about business psychology and was hard to read. The topic as such is really interesting and I had heard about nudging before, but the examples used were very specific US examples that were hard for me to understand without a general understanding about the pension plan etc. I liked the intro though in which they wrote about all the way people can be influenced and about human behaviour! Made me think ‚that’s so true‘ more than once.

Nikita Lalwani – The Village

A book I got at the Berlin Book Swap, and the first book by and Indian author I’ve ever read (I think). She was born in India and raised in the UK. The story is really interesting, it’s essentially about a film crew going to an open prison in India for the BBC to shoot a documentary. The main protagonist was born in India and thus is helping with translating etc. But as the story goes on, she finds that she’s somehow trapped between the two worlds, not really British, not really Indian either. Also, the other crew members are starting to script the stories for more dramatic effect, which is something I’ve always wondered. How much truth is in documentaries? I won’t tell the ending here, but the story was very nice! However, not nice enough for an entire post.

And there you have it, one post and 5 books off the list. Maybe I should do two at a time from now on? I will figure it out!

On a personal note:

I got my hair cut today! Finally shorter hair again (I’m dying in the summer time and I need to have my neck free). This has been the second time this year for me to go to the hair dresser. Normally, I went once a year, if at all and just let it grow, or I had my Mom’s friend cut it in her kitchen, but I sort of realized, I actually like getting real hair cuts and getting treatments and chatting with my hair dresser (game addict and movie lover, we always find things to talk about) and it really helps me with my confidence. I always want to expand this to dressing nice and all, but I am so lazy. But then again, if you dress good, you feel good (I don’t mean dress and expensive handbag, more like clean shoes and matching socks). Maybe I should make the effort and see what it does for me, what do you think?

I am so behind with this blog… I either need to skip books and don’t write entries about them, or have two books per post. I should probably figure this out at some point, because summer time is reading time and I have so many books that I still have not blogged about.

Today’s book is 4321 by Paul Auster, that I got for my birthday two years ago and postponed again after I started to read it, because I find his style hard to get into. But more about that later.

The book is about Archibald Isaac Ferguson, born on March 3, 1947 in New Jersey and his lifes. Yes, I said lifes, because after the first chapter about his parents and his birth, the book devides itself into four parts (hence the title) and we get for alternative versions of Archibald, which I found so clever. Without spoiling anything, let me give you an example. His father has a store for electric household devices. In one alternative scenario, he gets robbed, in the other the store burns down, in yet another the father dies and in the final one, his father is expanding the business and becomes really really rich. The same family but different life choices and different directions in which the life is moving because of this. Next to the family, there is one other character that is always making an appearance which is the character of Amy and in one part, Archie is actually dying as a child and that number is just a blank page afterwards. All in all, a very clever idea for a book that really makes you think about your own life and the things in life that set your path and how it could have been different if just a little thing had changed. The last chapter is also very cool with a nice reveal, but I don’t want to spoiler you!

Now, as I said, I started to read this and then dropped it again, because I was not in the right headspace for it. The style used in this book is probably not to everyone’s liking. Auster’s writing is insanely dense with so many details about the timing their in (civil rights movements, vietnam war etc.) and almost no dialogue. Rather than them talking, you get to know Archies thoughts and the reasoning behind his actions which is really interesting, yet a bit hard to read. The sentences are also very long, so if that’s not what you like, the book is probably not for you. Another issue I had with the book was that many characters appeared very snobby. They constantly mention books or plays or musicians that one must have read or know (I good deal of them unknown to me) and I personally have a problem with people like that, because I don’t think that there are things you MUST read/watch/listen to. Culture comes in many shapes and forms, and everyone has a personal liking. Also, just because something is labeled a Classic does not mean that it’s good or still holds up to today’s standards (more on that if I every get to do my Kafka post). None of the characters, except for his father Stanely, seem to be working class and Stanley is constantly described as a bore that is falling asleep during movies and does not care for books. This kind of upset me, because it’s a clichee. You can be working class with no college or university education and still read a lot of books or know a lot of movies (classic or modern).

But again, the thing that made me love this book in the end was this premise of life choices and alternative chapters in ones life. I mean, if I had not moved to Berlin, but to Leipzig where I also got into University, how would my life differ now? If I had decided to not go to University at all, but get a training and then get on to work, how would my life be now? If I had decided to get a job in Japan, how would my life be now? It’s fun to play around with things like this and it’s at the same time a bit sad that there is no answer to that. I really need the What-If machine from Futurama!!!

(And I also need to rewatch Futurama XD)

So, if you’re looking for a book that makes you question your life choices, there you go!

On a personal note:

Only two days left until I get to see Janelle Monáe!! I hardly ever go to concerts, because I don’t like a lot of people in small spaces, but I knew that I needed to see her. I am also going with a dear friend of mine, so I can share the memories ❤ I really love Janelle Monaé’s music and I can’t wait to hear it live! Also… I don’t know what to wear T____T I want to like nice for a change~~

A blog entry about an author probably no one has every heard about, how fun! Today is local with Ehm Welk, an author from Brandenburg, Germany where I am from as well (actually not that far away from my hometown). (Rather) famous authors from Brandenburg are so scarce, so I always try to read them when I find them. He also, just like Fallada, had to censor himself during Hitler’s dictatorship during which he wrote the book Die Lebensuhr des Gottlieb Grambauer (The Life Clock of Gottlieb Grambauer).

I found this book at a church flea market (yes, I do love them a lot) and since I had always wanted to read Ehm Welk, I grabbed it for like 2 Euro. The book was such a delight. It’s that kind of book in which nothing really happens but still you are really invested, a slice of life kind of book. The story is about Gottlieb Grambauer and his life, from his childhood in the south of Brandenburg all the way to his life as an adult in the north of Brandenburg (my part of Brandenburg) and in Berlin as well every now and then. According to Wikipedia, Welk was born in the north but moved to the south and later back to the north, the book has it reversed. Generally, it was so interesting to read this book because it follows the life of this totally normal guy from the country side. Now, books on normal people are not uncommon, but as far as I can tell from the books I’ve read so far, most of them experience their life adventures in cities. This is the countryside. And as someone coming from Brandenburg, when I am saying countryside, I mean countryside. Nature, animals, plants, gossip, people judging you on your behavior – what a blast! Some of the regions mentioned I actually know myself and that made picturing it in my head a lot easier.

Also, although nothing really happens in that book, it makes you think at times. For example, when Gottlieb arrives in the north and seeks a woman, he explains that when seeking a woman to marry you need to look at her shoes. The way she treats her shoes show you her character, according to him. I actually paused there and thought about my shoes… it sort of works (*hides all her uncleaned shoes*). The timely setting of the book is also really interesting because it moves on from the time when the Kaiser was still in charge of Germany all the way up to the Weimarer Republik and shows how people in the country side coped with all the change. Really interesting!

In short, if you would like to read an not-so-well-known author from a not-so-well-known regions of Germany, I can highly recommend this book. It brought me laughter, tears, pondering about my shoes, it has it all! Also, when I read it, a 4-leaved clover fell out of the book! What a nice surprise!

On a personal note:

It’s so hot! My Nordic pale freckled slightly red-haired self cannot take this anymore. I am sweating like crazy, I cannot focus at work, I have no motivation to do anything. The only good thing is though that I can swim a lot. Swimming makes me so happy. I have yet to find something that makes me happier than floating around in the water surrounded by nature (and, if possible, no other humans). I just cannot be stressed, angry, or sad when I’m in water.

It’s bibliography time! I love reading bibliographies. Last year I read ones about Coco Chanel, Grace Kelly and Kurt Tucholsky. As I did not have this blog last year, I can’t link you to them. I always find it so interesting how ‚famous‘ people lived their lives and how to got to the point that made them well-known and or successful. Many times, you can get some piece of advise out of it and even if you don’t, you gain enough trivia for small talk at parties XD This blog entry is about the bibliography about Hans Fallada a German author that lived between 1893 and 1947. Actually, I did not know about him until two years before when I read ‚The Book of Forgotten Authors‘, a fun read about authors that once were very successful in Great Britain but got forgotten. It had an entry about Fallada because apparently the English translation of his book Kleiner Mann, was nun? (Little Man, What Now?) was quite the hit back in the days? Anyhow, I wrote the book down on my never-ending tbr list and then when I injured my shoulder and my doctor prohibited me from carrying books around, a friend gave me his reader and I found the collected works of Fallada for 99 cents at Amazon (yes, yes, I know…. ). For the next six months, I read nothing but Fallada (he published a lot. A. lot.). I really enjoyed his books, especially Jeder stirbt für sich allein (Every Man Dies Alone), Der eiserne Gustav (Iron Gustav), Der Alpdruck (Nightmare in Berlin) and Der Trinker (The Drinker). I really like books that play between 1900 and 1950 and capture the political and societal changes of that time and Fallada really excels at that. His characters (although his women are quite flat, but I blame that on the time?) are also very well thought-out and entertaining. He is sometimes rambling a bit but in the end, I can really enjoy him.

Now, I found this book one day at a book shop and knew immediately that I need it because I really wanted to learn more about Fallada. And I must say, I really really liked this. I had my problems with the Chanel bibliography that I read because it was more like a novel, but this one was more like an academic work with quotes from his books and letters he wrote and received and it really got the reader close to the person Fallada was. Turns out, he wasn’t all that nice. Starting with killing his friend in what was planned as a suicide-murder kind of thing to his morphine addiction to how he treated his wives. After the Nazi’s came into power, he continued writing but changed his novels to avoid trouble with them. It said in the bibliography that Iron Gustav had a very different ending at first, but the publishing house changed it to its intended ending after the war (the ending I read). I found this very interesting, I would like to compare the two of them. I was also very unaware how much of his own life turned into books. Wer einmal aus dem Blechnapf frisst (not published in English as far as I know) is about a man who goes to prison, then gets released and even though he tries to get a proper life he fails time and time again and ends up in prison again. Turns out, Fallada was in prison too and his experiences inspired him to this novel. I love getting background like this, but I need to read about it after I read the books. If I had read the bibliography before his books, I wouldn’t have enjoyed them as much.

Also, the books says that Fallada’s son went to a Nazi elite school in Templin, my hometown! I actually know which school they are referring to. I always get sort of excited when my home town is mentioned and it’s not about Angela Merkel (jup, also from my hometown) or neo-Nazi crimes. People that are from Berlin or other bigger cities can probably not understand this, but when you come from such a small small small city, it being mentioned outside the city is a big thing. I randomly have home pride, but sometimes I do, okay XD

So, if you know Hans Fallada and would like to know more about his life, I would really recommend this bibliography, if not, well… thanks for reading anyways!

On a personal note:

Game of Thrones ended… oh my… It was so bad. So many interesting story lines completely wasted, so much fan service so many special effects for the sake of special effects… ugghh… I hope that Martin eventually finishes the books so we get an ending that is not a six episode long cringe fest. And no, I am not mad because Dany got mad or the person I wanted to sit on the iron throne did not in the end, I’m a not a twelve year old. I am mad because they butchered what started out as a great tv show with unusual plot developments, strong female leads and morals (and dragons!) and turned it into…. this. Okay, I made the promise to myself to not let my entries be too negative, so I’ll say this, meeting my friend every day for six weeks and drink Gin with her while cringing about the episodes was so much fun!! Without this, I would be so much more frustrated XD Here’s to you, Lisa *kanpai*

Happy Labor Day (if you’re living in Germany)! How do I spend my national holiday, you ask? Staying inside, reading, doing laundry and blogging while at some parts in Berlin some people are probably currently fighting the police. I did not plan this, but the book for this entry actually fits the day quite well – Grapes of Wrath. An American classic by John Steinbeck who was, according to the all-knowing internet, a leftist and possibly a Communist. I had to read Of Mice and Men in English class and fell in love with this book (and John Malkovich ❤ ) an I always wanted to read more of Steinbeck’s novels, but as life goes, I never really did until I found this at a church book flea market (you’d wonder how many bloody thrillers, gory horror novels and left-winged books you can find there. My purge also included Frankenstein XD).

The plot is easy to be told. A family from Oklahoma suffers from the Great Depression and seeks a better life in California. Upon their arrival, they realize that life is not better there, in fact it might be even worse as they face not only unemployment and poverty but also prejudices from the people of California.

What I really liked about the novel is it’s attention for detail. In one of the very first chapters, Tom (the eldest of the family) watches a turtle cross a road. The struggle of the turtle is described in so much detail that you almost feel for it. That’s how realistic descriptions are done right (looking at you, Effi Briest, worst book I’ve ever read). As the overall topic is the Great Depression this book is really not a happy one (duh!) and you can actually feel the bleakness and tragedy of it all. The hopes of the family to find a better life in California is nice. They all dream to find work picking fruits and the Grandfather goes on and on about how he will work there and eat the fruits, so many fruits that his stomach will ache, but deep down, one knows from the very beginning, that their hopes will never be fulfilled. In fact, during the whole books there are people warning them to give up on their dreams, that California does not want them, that they will not find money and happiness there, that it’s all different from what they heard and expect. Yet, they are not willed to give it up and need to find out the truth themselves. They are being mistreated by the people from California and they make it clear that they do not want them. Somehow, I couldn’t help but to think about the refugees coming to Germany. They have so much hope, probably heard all kind of stories about how glorious their life will be here too and once they get here, they get all the resentments and realize that it’s not a perfect country… but I don’t want to talk about that. People who know me know my opinion about all of this. People who don’t but would like to, feel free to ask.

Another strong theme of the book for me was sticking together. The family starts as a whole plus a preacher that lost his faith in God. As the story progresses though, the family slowly starts to fall apart. People die, others leave, but it seems like they find another „family“ namely the people around them who struggle the same way and also have nowhere else to go. When the dam breaks and threatens to flood the camp all men are working together to save the camp.

I also found it very interesting how the preacher goes of for a while and comes back now preaching socialism/communism ? and how the capitalists are exploiting the poor people that just want to live a better life. This is, in my opinion, also shown in the fact that the camp is described as a sort of paradise in which everyone is equal and people look out for each other.

Is that really what Steinbeck intended to say? Probably not, but this is my book blog and this is my interpretation.

Okay, Britannica says he wanted workers to retain their dignity and keep their family together despite all the disaster. I was sort of right?

Anyways, I loved the book, I am more than glad that I did because this means I will probably enjoy other Steinbeck novels as well (always wanted to read East of Eden too) and that I like books that deal with exploiting workers (people who know me know that deep down I am all for social equality).

On a personal note:

I just did an hour long work out, my muscles ache in a good way! When I was in high school I would never have thought that sport would mean that much to me. I’ll be at my parents for the weekend because a dear friend is turning 30, hopefully I’ll find some time to ride the bike in the nature while listening to podcasts or music ❤

Also no picture today. The book is a hard cover but the person before must have lost the flap. It’s now literally a blue book without anything written on it XD