Reading List: fiction

In my piece on the Three-Body trilogy, I mentioned that my reading map has some sizeable blank spots when it comes to Asia and Africa. So I simply googled what you absolutely have to have read in Chinese literature. One name and one title kept coming up: Lu Xun and “The True Story of Ah Q”. It isn’t a long story – that

When Stephen King gets really good, he usually ends up in prison. The novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”, on which “The Shawshank Redemption” is based, is really very good. The film deserves its excellent reputation. But I read the novella a long time ago. I saw “The Green Mile” in the cinema back then. M

A few days ago, I watched The Life of Chuck. It’s a truly unusual film, especially considering it’s based on a Stephen King story. Tom Hiddleston’s dance scene may be what sticks with you, but Mark Hamill as the grandfather is every bit as brilliant. I bought the book right after seeing the film. The book is just as un

At some point, I was standing in a bookshop looking for a present for my niece. And then I found it: a story I’ve known since childhood. It was in my reader back in primary school. My parents tell me that at some point they knew it almost by heart. I have five siblings, and they practised reading this story with every

I want to get around to some heavier literature on my reading list. What a doorstopper. It’s the Three-Body trilogy – “Trisolaris” in German – in a single volume: 1,740 pages. The book weighs quite a bit. This was the book that ultimately accompanied me through my surgery. I came to it through the Netflix series and my

It was one of the books I took with me to hospital last year. I didn’t actually get round to reading it until after rehab, though: Project Hail Mary. The film does the book justice in many respects. It shows that a five-armed (or five-legged?) “rock creature” can be more interesting than entire Marvel universes. Still,

ta’ puq mach? Huh? Emperor-child-small? Why do I actually own this book? To be honest, I don’t really know. I like the story. Well … that’s probably a non-statement … I think there are very few readers who don’t like The Little Prince, I mean really don’t like it. Not everyone elevates the story the way some people do,

In 2023 I gave away this book-shaped blend of candy floss, halva and the entire display case of a Turkish bakery as a gift. Fortune-cookie wisdom on every page. But sometimes that’s exactly what you need. A boy meets a mole, a fox and a horse, and together they talk about friendship, courage and accepting help. Yes, th

If you read a lot, you always get the feeling that you have basically never had a new thought in your entire life. A truly fresh thought, I mean. Somebody has always had that thought before you and written it down, too. With eight billion people on the planet, it’s hard to have such a thought anyway, when so many brain

I’ll admit it right away: I bought this book for one reason only. I had seen the film Arrival and liked it immediately. The film is based on Ted Chiang’s novella “Story of Your Life”, which is part of the German collection Die Hölle ist die Abwesenheit Gottes (“Hell Is the Absence of God”). When I learned that, I natur

There is science fiction like “Armageddon” or, if you insist, “The Core”, which is occasionally somewhat entertaining but has about as much to do with science as the Pope has to do with artificial contraception. And there is science fiction that doesn’t make every halfway science-minded brain attempt a suicidal leap ou

I can’t say exactly when I bought this book. My edition came out in 1999, and the price on the back is still in Deutschmarks. I think it was 2001. I do remember where I bought it: in a bookshop in Oldenburg. It was a weekend. I’d been out for breakfast in town with someone beforehand. At the time I was still living in

This book is a bit problematic. It’s one I only read after I had seen the film adaptation: Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”. The book is often counted among the important novels of science fiction, and you can see its significance for military science fiction. Even so, I find it decidedly questionable and difficul

You’re up to your neck in it! In myth? No – in religion. That was the first thing that struck me when I held this book in my hands. The battle of good versus evil, built on a massive biblical and religious foundation. I found that pretty tiring to read. I read It with far more enthusiasm. It’s certainly not a bad book,

I still remember exactly where I bought this book: Münster. In a bookshop in town. The Bundeswehr had sent me there, and the barracks were fairly close to the city centre. So, plenty of opportunities to buy books. It must have been winter, because I picture a brightly lit bookshop while it was already getting dark outs

Well, what can I say? No – strictly speaking, the question should be: what should I say? And to that, there’s a clear answer: nothing, really. This book is my final boss. I’ve owned it for more than 30 years and still haven’t managed to finish it. Not for lack of trying – but every time, at some point, I give up (never

This book was another Christmas present – though one I picked out myself. I think it was 1993, though it may have been a year earlier. I was out Christmas shopping with my parents. Since they weren’t quite sure which book to get me this time, we simply went into a bookshop, and this is the one we came out with. Not bei

It is the Stephen King book I’ve owned the longest: “It”. Hmm. That sounds kind of strange. “It” – that works twice over here as well – is also the book that, when I picked it up again, showed me most clearly that I urgently need to buy glass doors for my bookshelf and then cover them with UV protection film. The once

It was the first book I ever read in English, out of necessity: for a long time, it simply wasn’t available in German (the translation, “Im Sturm,” only came out much later). A classmate lent it to me. The pro-American slant was even more obvious in this one. The ending felt like a bit of a deus ex machina to me, but I

As a teenager and young adult, I loved reading Tom Clancy. I lost interest at some point, but I really enjoyed his early books. Yes, his writing was very pro-American, to put it mildly. Still, he was the master of the techno-thriller. And The Hunt for Red October was simply brilliant, both as a book and later as a film