In this classic 1905 Christmas story, one of O. Henry’s most famous, we meet Della and Jim, a young married couple who are as poor as church mice….

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Far too many memories are haunting her of the beautiful farm where so many terrible things happened….

Gesehen: All Cheerleaders Die (2013) von Lucky McKee/Chris Sivertson. Sehr unterhaltsamer Comedy-Horror um mörderische Cheerleader und wunderbar gay….

For the longest time I somehow merged Richard Brautigan and Kurt Vonnegut into one person. Even after reading „Slaughterhouse Five“ I could never really make two different people out of them in my mind….

Die von mir sehr geliebte Interview Buch-Reihe „Kampa Salon“ trifft nach  meiner Lieblingsschriftstellerin 1 Siri Hustvedt auf Lieblingsschriftstellerin 2 Margaret Atwood, da geht doch zumindest literarisch das Jahr überaus versöhnlich zu Ende….

Andrei Tarkovsky is probably my all time favorite film director with a very specific cinematic athetic….

The Western Wind is a marvelous, fascinating, multilayered medieval mystery set in the 15th century in a tiny, poor little village in Somerset in danger of falling off the map. Thomas Newman sort of the intellectual thinker in the …

Especially in times of the pursuance and killing of people of a different faith or of different ideas by fanatic Islamists on the one side and equally fanatic fascists on the other side Voltaire’s text is more important than ever….

OK it looks to me as if Sorokin is the illegitimate brainchild of David Lynch, Dostojewski and Shirley Jackson. It all starts idyllic enough with a country doctor named Garin being stuck in a snowstorm in a little village without …

  Today I would like to enthuse you for one of my favorite books „Orlando“ – the longest love letter and the history of literature….

Gesehen: „The Hole in the Ground“ (2019) von Lee Cronin mit Seána Kerslake. Irischer atmosphärischer Horror mit tollen Bildern um eine Mutter die ihren Sohn im Wald wiederfindet neben einem riesigen Loch und der nicht mehr der selbe …

After the audiobook „The Case of Charles Dexter Ward“ this was my first book I read by him and what a strange experience it is to encounter his nightmarish, eery universe. Lovecraft grouped his stories as follows: „There are my …

Another gem of the „Naturkunden“ series by Matthes & Seitz Verlag. At some stage I think I really want them all….

Diesen Roman hatte mir meine sehr belesene Chefin schon vor Ewigkeiten empfohlen und ich habe nicht die leiseste Ahnung, warum es derart lange gedauert hat, bis ich ihn endlich in Angriff nahm….

This book is filled with short intriguing chapters, each chapter focusing on an important period of history. It starts with the Middle Ages / Renaissance and ends with culture and the world right after the fall of the Berlin wall….

Just some adjectives that describe this novel, which is one of my favorites this year: Tender Raw Heartbreaking Beautiful Stunning…

Lord of the Flies is one of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read. It was certainly disturbing when I read it the first time and it still is….

The story feels like a very reduced film script which I think is very typical of her novels. There is a subtle subdued bleakness and very little that could be described as a plot….

Gesehen: „Lost River“ (2014) von Ryan Gosling. Wunderbar verspult, tolle Bilder, großartiger Soundtrack – auch beim zweiten Sehen einfach großartig….

I met Eliot Weinberger at the International Literature Festival in Berlin 2 or was it 3 years ago, not really knowing him then. I had wandered into a reading, waiting for some other event to start and was mesmerized by …

One of the most beautiful books I own but then all of Judith Schalankys books are incredibly well made and astoningishly  beautiful….

This groundbreaking essay was hard work for me and it took me a while and a second and third reading to be able to somewhat summarize my takeaways. It explores how in the age of mass media audiences can see …

„I was finally doing something that really mattered. Sleep felt productive….

Richard Feynman is a physicist who taught at Cornell and Princeton, worked on the Manhattan Project and won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1965….

Jenny Erpenbeck’s powerful novel „Gehen, Ging, Gegangen / Go, Went, Gone“ is one of the most moving and clearsighted books I read this year. Richard a former classics professor in the east part of Berlin is getting used to his …