Welcome all as the best day of the year dawns; the day heralding 30 days of undiluted reading/blogging pleasure.  Let German Literature Month commence!

I’m impressed with the reading plans that have been published over the last month or so.  If all those books are read, this will be the best GLM yet.  I haven’t published my plans because they’ve been changing on a almost daily basis.  Right now though my German Literature Month looks like this:

Week One (Award Winners Week)
The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons – Monica Cantieni (Swiss Book Prize Shortlistee)
The Tower – Uwe Tellkamp (German Book Prize Winner)

Week Two – Read As You Please (Crime)
Goetheruh – Bernd Köstering
Big Bad Wolf – Nele Neuhaus

Week Three – Read As You Please (Ladies on My Completist List)
Jenny Erpenbeck – The End of Days
Alina Bronsky – Call Me Superhero
Julia Franck – West

Week Four – Joseph Roth Week (or in my case Novelists of The Weimar Republic)
Berlin in the 1930’s: Hans Fallada – What Now,  Little Man? / Erich Kästner – Going to The Dogs
Vicki Baum – Grand Hotel
Joseph Roth – Flight Without End

It’s a selection that ticks almost all the boxes on the pick and mix challenge. (Rules here.) Although something that is not a novel is missing.  I’ll see if I can squeeze in some poetry somewhere along the line. The challenge won’t be in the reading, but in the reviewing. Thanks to a very busy October, I’m a little out of practice.

I’m adding one additional personal challenge  – I must not purchase any titles reviewed elsewhere during German Literature Month. Which means you must not seduce me into making my TBR larger, particularly as, given the bounteous harvest of new German literature releases this autumn, I will probably be reading German literature until the end of the year.  I am allowed to add to my wishlist – I’ll let you know how many that turns out to be at the end of the month.

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A tiny piece of hostess admin before the fun begins in earnest.  The German Literature Month blog is once more up and running and all participants with blogs  (30+ – how terrific is that!) have been added to the blogroll.  If you’re joining in, and don’t see your name up in lights, so to speak, please leave a comment below and you will be added.

There are also prizes to be won by participating.  Whoever tallies the most pick and mix points will win a copy of both Berlin Tales and Vienna Tales, kindly donated by Oxford University Press.  Caroline and I will chose our favourite post and the writer will win 2 titles by Alina Bronsky, The Hottest Dishes of The Tartar Cuisine and Call Me Superhero, kindly donated by Europa Editions.  For your reviews to be in the running for these prizes, please link them into the Mr Linky on the German Literature Month blog.

All that remains is for Caroline and I to wish you a very enjoyable November.  🙂