Just 6 weeks to the end of the year, and I’ve been crunching numbers. At the end of October, despite my best efforts, the TBR stood 3 books taller than it did at the beginning of the year. Put like that, it sounds like the TBR is under control …. From a different angle, however, that equates to 85 2019 acquisitions and review copies still to read. 😳 Common sense would tell me to forego book shopping in London later this month, but a trip to London without a visit to the Marylebone Daunts is simply not a viable proposition!

Unfortunately it is once more time to cull.

Using Karen’s strategies, surely I will be more successful than Eugen Roth’s hapless reader. You may remember I discovered his poem about a failed book cull a couple of years ago, but couldn’t find an English translation. Well, that problem is now resolved.

You can find this poem in Roth’s collection Merely Human (translated by Christoph Ottinger) which is ideal for dipping in and out of when a little comic respite is needed. (And it has been, as my reading for German Literature Month feels very serious this year.) I also like the bilingual layout of the book. A poetry collection feels incomplete if the original German is missing.