I like books. A lot.
The importance of a powerful first sentence in a novel is a necessity all of us book lovers agree on. It must catch our attention and grip us to make sure we read on. In Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Tyll, first published in Germany in 2017, I read one of the most potent introductory phrases I … Continue reading Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann
The future is now In 2017, exactly 35 years after Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) was released in cinemas, moviegoers were once again brought back to the dystopian science-fiction world based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). The reason for this was the release of Denis Villeneuve’s sequel Blade … Continue reading An Inquiry into the Abiding Popularity of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Oh boy…this post here…it took me months to write this text and share it. Sometimes I don’t even know why it is so hard for me to rekindle my blogging-spark. Then again, I do know very well why. I’ve always felt the need to justify and explain myself. Lately, I’ve been trying to focus my … Continue reading Why I took a break
Sally Rooney ist ein neuer Star der Literaturszene. Nach ihrem Debütroman Gespräche mit Menschen (2017) gelang der 29-jährigen Schriftstellerin aus Irland mit ihrem zweiten Roman Normale Menschen 2018 der internationale Durchbruch. Allein in den USA wurden in den ersten vier Monaten nach der Veröffentlichung über 64 000 Hardcover-Exemplare verkauft. Im Jahr 2020 folgte die Fernsehadaption. Die … Continue reading Die On-Off-Generation: Über den Bestseller „Normale Menschen” von Sally Rooney
The Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk has been publishing novels in her home country for over three decades now. Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych was published in 2009 and exactly ten years later, the translation Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by the incredibly talented Antonia Lloyd-Jones finally conquered the international book … Continue reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk
Imagine you open a book and are suddenly drawn into another world: Italy in the 1930s. You get to escape your boring life at Langton Hall, a gothic castle and your family's ancestral home. You get to escape your parent's expectation to behave accordingly and to marry a respectable man they pick out for you. … Continue reading Under a Dancing Star by Laura Wood
"Let me begin again". With this phrase, Ocean Vuong, introduces his debut novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. But how do I begin? After reading Vuong's epistolary novel, I am struggling to find the words that would help me express my thoughts on this book, simply because he manages to play and experiment with language, … Continue reading On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
I read this book for the first time back in 2017. With the release of the sequel last December, I planned to reread Call Me By Your Name. Why? Simply because André Aciman's novel is one of those books you can read again and again, and everything you do, you read it differently. It touches … Continue reading Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman
A single Tweet on Twitter consists of 280 characters. Is that enough to get poetic? Does the shortness of the posts explain the popularity of literary Tweets on Twitter known as Twit Lit? Much quicker, always accessible, and easy to share. When Twitter was launched in 2006, it was defined by so-called "bursts of inconsequential … Continue reading 6) Twit Lit and old diaries
Jarett Kobek's novel I Hate the Internet was published in 2016. The lives of characters in the book are determined by innovations coming from Silicon Valley: Google, social media, and Online Shaming. The novel is an accumulation of hate comments, information overflow, and monologues on how the internet promotes racism and misogyny while simultaneously creating … Continue reading 5) I Hate Instagram #followme
reading classics 