Buch-Reviews

The premise of genetically mutated humans is interesting and disturbing at the same time. Also, the setup with a human dictator ruling the Earth is critical, being written in 1940. Then, there’s hilarious technology and plot. It’s a wild rollercoaster ride without any thought to plausibility. Some strands of the plot lead nowhere or are simply superfluous. The character development simply isn’t there. If a character changes, it’s without any discernible steps. The world is black and white with no intermediate steps. One sole Slan single-handedly develops and produces the most outstanding new machines and technologies. I can’t believe this ever stood out. Nonetheless, 2* only because of the inventiveness.

The S in SF stands at least as much for social as for science when it comes to this book. There’s a science part in that a scientist discovers an eternity serum. But more importantly, The Great Secret is about the social implications of such an eternity serum. Obviously, it hinges upon the issue of overpopulation which eternity would cause and its consequences of humanity ultimately fighting for survival in a world where too many humans fight for not enough resources.

The twist here is that the scientist discovers this early enough and approaches the world leaders of the time (it is set from the 1950’s to the 1970’s) who surprisingly act long-sighted enough to take action and either isolate or eliminate everybody who took this serum. Because eternity is infectious. A very interesting twist in times of Corona when I read this. The first half of the book is a slow burn. You basically know what has been discovered but Barjavel doesn’t tell us explicitly and you are slogging through many many pages, hoping that finally you are getting told what’s going on and come to the interesting part. Once this happens, the social utopia starts. How could an isolated world look like where nobody dies and nothing degenerates. Quickly, the utopia falls apart and we are rather talking about a dystopia.

This setup is original and I like that Barjavel’s social science fiction that resulted. It has a 70’s vibe of liberalism and free love as well as a macho male slant which might turn off modern readers. This and the slow start hinder it from being an exceptional experience but still one of the more interesting SF stories worth a read.

A solid mix of fantasy and SF. Could have been an episode of Star Trek with humanity monitoring backward settlements on remote planets without intruding. It’s not that those settlements have evolved independently from humanity. In fact, Carrig has been settled by a human spaceship crashed there. Since, this fact has been forgotten and only remains recognizable in legends.

Now, outlaws from a rogue planet disturb the balance on medieval Carrig by intervening with superior weapons to exploit the rich resources on this planet. Scouts of the Federation try to alleviate this, allying with selected locals without revealing their identity.

There are enough interesting ideas and the world building is sufficiently original to provide entertainment without any major plot holes or implausibilities. If you like Star Trek, you’ll like this one.

Ich habe dieses Buch 2007 von einem Grabbeltisch im damals noch existierenden Frankfurter Laden von Zweitausendeins erworben und angefangen zu lesen. Auf halber Strecke bin ich damals stehengeblieben. Nicht, weil mir das Buch nicht gefallen hätte. Aber es war irgendwie anstrengend und irgendwas hat mich abgelenkt. Es ist aber immer im Hinterkopf geblieben als etwas Besonderes. Deswegen habe ich es 14 Jahre später nochmal rausgezogen. Eine gute Entscheidung und tatsächlich eine bessere Zeit, es jetzt zu lesen, wo ich annähernd in dem Alter bin, in dem Sigrid Damm zu der Zeit war, von der sie erzählt.

Es ist ein autobiographisches Reisebuch über ihre Zeit in Schottland in den frühen 90ern. Sie ist dort als Writer in Residence an der Universität Edinburgh, gibt auch Lesungen in Glasgow und lebt mit schottischen und deutschen Freunden, die sie von früheren Besuchen kennt. Sie erzählt von der Zeit, die sie mit den Freunden verbringt. Von Gedanken, die sie sich macht. Beobachtungen und Erlebnisse in Schottland. Es sind zumeist kurze Schnappschüsse, selten länger als eine Seite. Heraus kommt ein faszinierender persönlicher Einblick in eine kurze Lebensperiode einer Autorin, Partnerin, Freundin, Mutter. Nicht alles ist sympathisch, nicht zu allen Gedanken kann ich einen Bezug aufbauen. Aber genau das ist, was dieses Buch so einzigartig macht.

Empfohlen für jeden Leser über 50, der gerne Gedankenreisen macht und andere Länder und Menschen in Büchern kennenlernen möchte.

It’s been a long time since I last abandoned a book. But I couldn’t get any enjoyment out of this one and in the week I occupied myself with this one, I rather chose to do something else in the time I usually spend with books. I progressed about 60-70 pages, in a week. It’s just too depressing, too complex, too not enjoyable. I get it, it’s about losing oneself, going down, drinking in excess ending with death what you know from the start. I have two issues with that. First, it hits too close to home with a family member suffering a similar fate. That’s why I took this from my to-read list shortly after buying it. Now that this family member has died, I chose to give it a try. In comes issue number two. It’s far too heavy-handed and personal. Lowry writes about Lowry. Too much special interest here.

The Pursuer is a short sketch about a musician on the verge between genius and insanity. It’s only thinly disguised that it’s about Charlie Parker and his drug-fueled decline and death. In Germany, it was published as a stand-alone book while the novella is usually part of the collection Blow-Up and Other stories.

It’s a well-written character study of the madness that results from heroin abuse. It’s trying to give us insights into the mind of a genius that fails to cope with reality. Johnny Carter, the alter ego of Charlie Parker, is on a constant search to express what moves him. Coincidentally, works of genius result which nonetheless don’t satisfy him as they fail short from what he’s trying to achieve. He uses and abuses substances as well as the people around him. Being around him is like walking on a thin rope without a happy end.

I liked this novella but ultimately it’s a literary improvisation about jazz which itself is an improvisation and nothing I have any special bond to. Nice enough but nothing I could relate to personally.

I wasn’t really prepared for Coup de Grâce. At its surface, it’s a long monologue of Erick de Lhomond, looking back at an obscure place and time in history, the Baltique provinces in the aftermath of World War I with German corps fighting against communist Russian troops. He’s leading a squad of these corps and takes a base in the castle of his childhood friend Konrad and his sister Sophie. Against this backdrop, a fatal love triangle and psychological intimate theatre evolves.

What surprised me is the homo-erotic nature of this love triangle. While it never is mentioned explicitly due to the time this novella was written, it’s obvious that Sophie’s love for Erick never has a chance because Erick is attracted to men and specifically to Konrad. The way this plays out, ultimately leads to an extraordinary resolution. [As Sophie joins the communist troops she gets caught by Eric’s squad. Her comrades get executed and the one thing she asks of Erick is to be executed by him personally which he does. (hide spoiler)]

An intense and brief character study providing a glimpse into an extraordinary and forgotten setting. It hasn’t aged particularly well due to its specific content but it’s written well enough and the resolution makes it a worthy read that I don’t regret reading it given how short it is.

One of the few books that I chose to read a second time. And I don’t regret it. If at all, it’s gotten better with reading it again. Mostly because I’m now able to fully appreciate the quality and style of Kundera in addition to the topic of love and coincidence he’s writing about.

You know from almost the start that the ending will be tragic. The plot skips forth and back freely, providing depth and later on explaining how thing happened that you knew will happen. The structure of the book is excellent and worth any analysis that thousands of readers have done much more competently and thoroughly than I care to do.

What I love about this book the most is already contained in the title. You could also call it butterfly effect. Minor ripples in time, a coincidence here, a different choice there and life would be totally different. At the same time, a character remains what it is and will develop the way he does, notwithstanding what coincidences he will face. The disposition underneath is set even if the circumstances change.

There’s more to this book. It’s a political book with Kundera looking back at his Czech homeland from a distance of time and place. It’s a philosophical book about what drives us humans as individuals. And above all, it’s a great love story.

I can see why this novel got such an outstanding reception. It broached the important issue of racial discrimination at a time long before it got common sense that Blacks are equals. It treated outsiders in an empathic manner. Be it the deaf main character, his mentally handicapped best buddy, a drunkard or a removed bar owner. It also provides a great depiction of the poor deep South of the US.

Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s a necessary read today. Especially not outside of the US when the historical or political relation is lacking. Times have changed so much that racial issues are still prevalent but are very different from the situation depicted here. Also, the social milieu has changed dramatically. In these concerns, the novel is dated nowadays. That leaves the characters and their interaction. Here, the young age of the author becomes obvious. They aren’t anywhere close to real people. McCullers created idealized silhouettes. The main protagonist John Singer is unanimously loved as a projection screen with others seeing in him what they want him to be. But it never becomes clear or believable why that is. The relations between the characters serve a purpose to progress the plot but they don’t feel very plausible. The development of the characters is limited and only present through Singer as a catalyst.

Don’t get me wrong. I still like this book. It’s heartwarming. But at the same time, it feels naive and has lost the important message that it carried at the time of its creation.

What nonsense! Science Fiction is about ideas but the ideas here are far-fetched and underdeveloped. None of the events is explained in any believable fashion. The effort of giving depth to the main character is laughable. Nothing interesting is going on. A pure waste of time I only read because it is part of an SF collection I own and work my way through.

The Rabbit series is an exceptional literary effort. About every ten years, Updike published a new installment with Rabbit aging as much as the author and always taking place in the then present time, giving a snapshot of the USA every change of a decade from approx. 1960 to 1990. Rabbit at Rest is the official final novel of the series.

I have to applaud Updike for this idea and format as it fits in perfectly with my idea that the best time to read a book is when you are about the age the author was when he wrote the book and the most believable protagonists are those who are close to the author. One effect of the series progression is growing closer to Rabbit with each consecutive book, another one is Rabbit getting closer to my age with this one being the first one in which he’s slightly older than I am today. Rabbit at Rest accordingly is my favourite of the series with Rabbit’s issues being most related to my own personal issues. Many roads have closed. Life is getting narrower. You experience limits that haven’t been there before, physically as well as interpersonal.

If there’s a difference to the previous books, it’s the even more extensive descriptions of Rabbit’s experiences, thoughts and dreams providing scope to the character. There’s an undeniable tilt to the American experience of the time but simultaneously the experience of growing and aging is universal enough to have relevance for non-Americans as well. After reading through all four novels, I felt like a close friend of Rabbit and his family and it’s with a bit of sadness that I have to say goodbye to him for good.

Let me start out by copying my introduction from the review to Rabbit at Rest: The Rabbit series is an exceptional literary effort. About every ten years, Updike published a new installment with Rabbit aging as much as the author and always taking place in the then present time, giving a snapshot of the USA every change of a decade from approx. 1960 to 1990. This omnibus features the first three novels.

Looking back at all novels together, it’s not easy to judge them as separate books. They belong together and if you start at all with this series, go all the way and read all four books. Only this way you’ll get the maximum out of them. I can understand the common opinion that the second installment Rabbit Redux is a bit weaker than the others with a more outlandish plot that doesn’t really fit with Rabbit’s true character and only provides background explaining later developments which take a central role in Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest. But due to this, go with the flow and read Redux as well.

With each consecutive book, I enjoyed the series more as for once Rabbit and Updike came closer to my own situation in life and I grew closer to Rabbit and his camarilla. I can’t prove it but my gut feeling is that Updike’s quality of characterizations grew as well with plot increasingly taking the back seat while maintaining consistency in the depiction of its characters throughout. Each new start ten years later was fascinating to casually learn what has happened in between. Notwithstanding all the changes, Rabbit kept his tendency to run. Either away, with the flow, aimlessly or any combination thereof. Life isn’t always what you make it. It also just happens. And that’s what the Rabbit books are about for me.

With each new book, Houellebecq seems to get more and more disappointed with society and life if that’s possible at all given his consistently misanthropic and pessimistic oeuvre. I have a hard time imagining women liking or even reading this book to the end as basically every mention of them is in a merely objectifying way. They are objects of Houellebecq’s sexual wishful thinking, no real characters. In so far, Serotonin can’t be further away from any political correctness. I hope and I read Houellebecq in a way that it’s an expression of disappointment with life and not an expression of misogynism.

This continous breach of political correctness and mainstream opinion as well as a negative perspective is carried through all subjects appearing. The negation of playing to the vocational rules of society, irreconcilable criticism of agricultural policies, plotting child murder or denial of all interpersonal relationships to the extreme of eliminating oneself from society in all concerns. What does it say about myself that this might be my favourite book read in 2021?

Mal wieder eine Review in Deutsch da dieses Buch scheinbar nur in Deutsch und der Weltsprache Estnisch erschienen ist.

Hildesheimers Lieblose Legenden ist eine Sammlung von absurden Kurzgeschichten, die sich zumeist einen Aufhänger suchen, daran in mehr oder weniger origineller Weise mit Wortwitz abarbeiten, aber sich dann leider für meinen Geschmack tatsächlich daran aufhängen. Von den 18 Legenden haben mir ganze zwei gefallen. Zunächst zum Positiven.

‚Das Gastspiel des Versicherungsagenten‘ dreht das Klischee vom gescheiterten Künstler, der sich einen ordinären Brot-und-Butter-Job suchen muss, auf den Kopf. Ein gefeierter Pianist möchte nichts lieber sein als ein Versicherungsagent. Eine schöne lange Nase an alle Möchtergernkünstler, die auch heute noch aktuell ist.

‚Warum ich mich in eine Nachtigall verwandelt habe‘ erzählt von einem Zauberkünstler, der Menschen in Tiere verwandeln kann und das auch tut. Der lakonische Witz der Geschichte auf Kosten banaler Alltagsmenschen hat mich zum einzigen Mal in dieser Sammlung laut lachen lassen.

Alle anderen Legenden kämpfen mit dem beschränkten Blickwinkel des Autors, der sich meist nicht aus seiner Kunstblase lösen kann und einer Verhaftung in der Zeit ihres Entstehens. Viele der Geschichten sind pointierte Betrachtungen des Geistes- und Kulturlebens der 50er Jahre und damit für mich von vornherein uninteressant. Andere Geschichten mögen für ihre Zeit originelle Stilblüten gewesen sein. Aber mir erschließt sich nicht die Faszination von Geschichten, die Sprichwörter wie ‚Eulen nach Athen tragen‘ oder ‚Viele Köche verderben den Brei‘ auswalzen oder als absoluter Tiefpunkt der Kollektion ein scheußliches Gedicht von Hans-Magnus Enzensberger weiter ausgestalten.

The Sense of an Ending is one of the few books I wished were longer. This small novel resonated with me in a way few books have done. Looking back at the past became a big thing with me the last year.

Barnes‘ claim is the unreliability of memories. How they are biased to serve the view of their bearers. What would happen if you were able to revisit the past. Another theme is the gap between the world view when you are young, your vision of the future and your preoccupations at the time in contrast to the perception of old age and its preoccupation with the past.

The story is told in short paragraphs that at times have to be located somewhere in between essay and aphorism. In three or four sentences, Barnes gives us small tidbits of wisdom gathered from life experiences which mostly strike home.

This is a book I shall reread every ten years or so.

I often read science fiction and came across many authors but I wasn’t aware at all of David Gerrold before reading this book as part of a collection. A pity since he stands out among his peers in the way he’s approaching writing science fiction. While science fiction usually is about plot and world-building, Gerrold is giving us ideas.

Harlie is one of the early cognizant AI’s. 2001’s HAL was already around but Harlie can stand on his own. In fact, I would wager that Douglas Adams read this book before creating Deep Thought. Harlie designed the computer that follows him a decade before Adams‘ Deep Thought. But Harlie isn’t about humour. Harlie conducts long winding conversations with his project lead David Auberson, a psychologist. They revolve around love and religion as essential human traits separating man from machine.

By focusing on philosophical issues, Gerrold avoids the trap of obsolescence which so many SF stories from the past fall into. It shows that he put a lot of thoughts he was turning over in his head into this book. Some of them are out of place like his thoughts on his own homosexuality which are a long stretch in the context of the interaction between man and machine but for the early 70’s these thoughts are extraordinary nonetheless. SF certainly gave more freedom than other forms of writing. Delany’s Dhalgren comes to mind.

Where Gerrold fails the same way as is common in SF is in developing his characters. The interactions lack cohesiveness and the crucial relationship between the main human protagonist and his love interest is described weakly. Nonetheless, When Harlie was One is a recommended read for anybody who likes SF because of ideas and not of plot. Speaking of ideas, this novel is probably the first book in history that mentioned computer viruses.

Doesn’t stand the test of time. It’s repetitive, disrespectful and unimaginative science fiction from the not so golden age of SF.

As mentioned in other reviews, the conception resembles a series of Star Trek episodes. Each episode, a mixed crew is send to another planet to explore the habitat.

Things start going south with Russell’s definition of a mixed crew. Whites because they are good at technology. Blacks because they don’t get space nausea. Martians (!) because they use very little air, are fairly immune to cosmic ray-burn and with their tentacles are formidable fighters. No women. I could live with this as a representation of the time the book was written.

But this definition is a foreshadowing of Russell’s narrow-minded imagination. Each planet visitation follows the same structure of exploration, making first contact, getting attacked, finding ways to fight back and finally abscond back to Earth. A banal plot repeated four times and the author’s ideas for the different alien lifeforms can’t rescue this wreck of a spaceship.

One note: I read the German translation which probably is an abridged version of the book.

Now I really know what is meant with magical realism when talking about Latin American books. One Hundred Years of Solitude probably is the book that defined this genre. I read other books of this type before and really liked them. I also read Garcia Marquez‘ Love in the Time of Cholera twice and it was the reason why I sought out Hundred Years of Solitude. I thought that Love in the Time of Cholera also belongs to the school of magical realism. But Solitude is a whole other league of magic. In fact, I don’t think anymore that Cholera is in this genre.

Magical realism creates opportunities for fascinating artistic feats. A solution is promised once it stops raining. The next chapter announces that it rained for 4 years, 11 months and 2 days. The tribe mother already lives for 145 years when she starts to lose her grip on reality. A minor detached character literally ascends to heaven. Seventeen bastard descendants all carry the same sign on their forehead and die on the same day. I love this mean in the hand of a master who knows how to integrate them into a coherent plot and avoids the trap of becoming an absurd comedy. Garcia Marquez does this perfectly.

While I really liked this book, I enjoyed his later work about love in times of cholera even more. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a confusing and sprawling book by intention. The tale spans four or five generations, dozens of characters and most of them share the same few names. Arcadio, Aureliano, José, Remedios in various combinations. They are less individuals than representations of character types. While I see why the author did this, at times it gave me a hard time putting into context what I just read and I occasionally got detached from the figures and their actions. In the end, it was worth the effort. I won’t spoil the end but I found it to be a fantastic and logical resolution tying up the loose ends.

This book is the opposite of feelgood literature. Blindness is an enigmatic book doing its best to hinder you from entry. Each page is a struggle in reception due to the style as well as what is happening. I constantly felt at unease while reading Blindness. Not because its awkward or the topic is tasteless but because I really felt like being a blind among blinds while civilization has broken down.

One defining element making the situation unbearable is the omnipresence of human excrements. Each step you take can end up in a turd, every thing you touch, all your clothes as well as yourself will soon be covered by feces.

While this in itself is a dangerous situation with all the consequences coming from a complete lack of hygiene, the decisive element making hell out of life once all ordinary rules of society and living together have vanished are other humans. The selfish nature of man is at the center. Once survival is the most immediate need, there’s not much room for thinking about others. Pure darwinism rules. The strong use the weak. A group of men force others to place their women at their disposal in exchange for food. Care for members of your group is simply utilitaristic as a mean to get them to protect and help you in response.

As a light at the end of the tunnel, Saramago gives us one individual who still is able to see. One beacon in the darkness to preserve humanity. I won’t go so far as to take it as the message of this book that there’s always hope. Blindness is too complex and cryptic to carry such a simple message. But it’s a great book on the nature of what it means to be human.

Reading it in times of Covid-19 added a whole dimension to my reception. The selfishness of individuals in our Western civilization but also the helplessness of those in power fit the exaggerated patterns of Blindness. A shoutout to the ones who are still able to see, the Faucis of this world.

Reading Middlesex got me thinking about Auster’s 4 3 2 1 which I read shortly before. Both books are similar in their conception. They are immigrant tales. Greek orthodox for Eugenides, Jewish for Auster. Both have a focus in the 60’s and early 70’s with looks back to the beginning of the 20th century when the respective ancestors came to the US. While both books have one central character, Eugenides gives Cal’s parents and grandparents more room to develop. Thus Middlesex has more of a family saga quality starting in former Greek Smyrna in Asia Minor and moving on to Detroit spanning three generations of Stephanides. The similarities don’t stop with the conception. They even stretch to similar scenes such as a teenage mate dying next to the protagonist due to a brain aneurism and using this instance as a catalyst to propel the plot. Credit needs to be given to Eugenides having written 15 years earlier.

Middlesex cranks up the diversity register a lot more though. A recessive gene present mostly in three isolated geographies worldwide, one of them being the Turkish area around Smyrna, causes hermaphroditism which happens with Cal(liope) after incidents of incest running in her family. Eugenides doesn’t refrain from adding more diversity by injecting the mysterious founder of the Nation of Islam and the race riots of the late 60’s into the proceedings. The diversity card certainly played a big role in its overwhelmingly positive reception going as far as winning the Pulitzer price.

I was entertained by Middlesex in a mainstream way that you could bet on something interesting to happen next. Not as entertained as Pulitzer price level of greatness. Rather entertained in a way people are entertained by a good thriller, a romance or epic sagas. To highlight two chapters, I particularly remember when Cal’s grandmother Calliope joined the Nation of Islam in the 30’s as a silk worker and as a contrast Cal working in a freak peep show in San Francisco of the 70’s.

The problem I had with this novel is its constructed nature. Each chapter starts with a short introduction in which current day’s (Berlin 2002) Cal addresses the reader directly and narrates his present life before returning to the main story, i.e. how his gene came to bloom and finally revealed itself. To me, each chapter rather felt like a trick Eugenides performed to astonish than a logical progression. The above mentioned brain aneurism is just one of the examples, only used to further Calliope’s love interest in women. Another trick is Cal’s brother, only known as Chapter Eleven in this book. Not only, because he will lead the family business into bankruptcy with Chapter Eleven being the respective restructuring code under US law but also his first appearance takes place in the eleventh chapter of Middlesex.

My main issue and why I call these creative means tricks is the lack of consequences. Neither did Desdemona change a bit by getting involved in the Nation of Islam, nor did Cal suffer any noticeable late effect from being exploited when running away to San Francisco. There’s a finished character who narrates the story. And there’s a lot of events that don’t relate to what Cal is today. It’s only the predetermination of the gene that defines him and causes him troubles. In an inadequate manner, the book ends with salvation coming to today’s Cal from writing this book. And there we are back with Auster’s 4 3 2 1. What is it about writers that after all their books are all about the importance of writing instead of taking care of the concerns of us readers?