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. 🙂
Hi Lizzie, looks like an exciting reading month. Could you please add me to the blogroll of the GLM? Thanks and looking forward to all the upcoming reviews.
Good to have you on board. You’ve been added to teh blogroll.
Ambitious. I tried the Big Bad Wolf book but abandoned it. You’ll probably see why when you read it.
My favourite reading event of the year has arrived and I am so excited! Thanks for hosting this wonderful event with Caroline, Lizzy! I have already started my first book and I am looking forward to posting my intro post soon. Loved your reading list for the month! So you are planning to read the 1000 page mammoth Uwe Tellkamp’s ‘The Tower’ during the first week? All the best 🙂 I loved your recommendations in your previous posts. I want to read Julia Franck’s ‘The Blind Side of the Heart’, Arno Camenisch’s ‘The Alp’ and Wolfgang Herrndorf’s ‘Why We Took The Car’. I loved your descriptions of all of them. Happy reading!
Good morning, Vishy. I finished the 1004 pages of The Tower 5 minutes ago! It’s taken me 6 weeks – not a book for the faint-hearted. Now I face the challenge of compressing my thoughts into a blog-post …..
This is so awesome, Lizzy! Congratulations! Can’t wait to hear your thoughts on it!
So glad to become more familiar with this genre; it’s been sorely lacking in my reading repertoire.
Thanks for once again hosting this great event. Last year I discovered several new to me writers that are now on my read all I can list, Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig being foremost.
Not taking part in German Lit Month blog as my blog is still stalled due to other commitments, but will add German Language poems (translated ) hashtagged #Germanlitmonth to my Pomesallsizes twitter account throughout November.