so-soThe Dutch Girls
Won the German and the Swiss Book Prize this year.
Small, but complicated to read. But I have to be honest, I wasn't in the right set of mind for this book. So I couldn't really appreciate it or take in what it's really about. It confused me and couldn't hold my attention. But thta might really be all me, not the book.
Unimpressed Rossa in the background.
Stefan Zweig's autobiography led me to poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal's play Electra, which I borrowed from the library and started reading last night. It was turned into an opera by Strauss. I am listening to it on deezer, but it's not grabbing me so far. Any tips or info to help ease me into it? A passage to look forward to? A recording that's less strident than the one I am listening to? I'm OK with modernist music, so that's not it 😊
pickF, by Daniel Kehlmann (2013, transl. 2014)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Premise: A trip to see a hypnotist sends three brothers on different yet shared trajectories, when the experience inspires their father to abandon them.
Review: The odd title in theory refers to the main character in a book-within-the-book, but it could equally stand for “Fate,” “Freedom,” “Faith,” or “Fraud,” since each of the brothers‘ stories deal with all of these themes. ⬇️
A book I bought in Edinburgh and couldn't resist picking up to read straight away.
A collection of short stories by a 19th Century German author. The title story is sort of a ghost story, with much digression into the backstory. It was interesting to see the framing techniques used so that the author could present the end of the tale before proceeding to have a character relate a linear narrative.
#12BooksOf2024 @Andrew65
"During the afternoon there had been a christening."
#FirstLineFridays
Just about to start this collection of stories.
For September bookclub. This is sooooo good 😍 Add this to your shopping cart, please!
pickThe German edition of The dead girls‘ class trip contains the title story(the memory of a class trip before WW1 and the subsequent lives of the girls during the Nazi regime),Mail to the Promised Land (the story of a Jewish father who flees pogroms in Poland,raises his son in France,moves to the Promised Land in old age& continues to receive letters from his son after his death) &The End (post WW2:a former camp inmate hunts down his KZ guard).👍
pick#doublespin I‘ve finished this volume and feel like I‘ve only just started it. It‘s one of those poetry collections that will take many readings to really unlock. Especially the first part — this is a 3 part collection consisting of Poems To Night (the title of a notebook of 22 poems Rilke gifted his friend and confidant writer Rudolph Kassner in 1916), drafts of these poems, and unconnected Rilke poems also on the theme of night.
