Reading German Books in 2020 discussion

Hi Leyla, welcome! Great that you joined us!

Hallo,

Ich verstehe nicht. Was hat nicht funkioniert?

I'm reading:

1 Lügen über meine Mutter von Daniela Dröscher

I'm learning German at the moment I'm reading Short Stories in German for Beginners, but I hope to start proper German books soon, I mean books that are not written for learners. Would you recommend Lügen über meine Mutter? It sounds interresting.

Yeah. I would definitely recommend it. But as a warning I would like to say one needs to be patient while reading this book. Personally, I got very angry in the beginning of the book and almost stopped reading it for a while. Later on, I started again. But for language leaning, it's a great choice.

I read: "Ich liebe eine Tigerente" by Janosch. Unfortunately, it was not fun.

Layla wrote: "Yeah. I would definitely recommend it. But as a warning I would like to say one needs to be patient while reading this book. Personally, I got very angry in the beginning of the book and almost sto..."

Thank you. I'll put it on my list of books to read. I never thought of getting children's books, but that makes sense to get started reading German books.

Yay! I finished "Lügen über meine Mutter" by "Daniela Dröscher". What a read!

I was feeling really angry at the beginning of this book because the behavior of Ela's father was unfathomably anger-provoking. His attitude towards his wife was very rude. As a reader, I hated him to the core. At some point, I also felt embarrassed because of the weight of Ela's mother. But it was fascinating to read how Ela loved her mother. The book became uninteresting at some point because there was only one theme in the book, and it was repeating itself. After a long series of boring scenes, I came across one concept I never knew about — Parentifizierung.

Parentification occurs when parents look to their children for emotional and/or practical support, rather than providing it themselves. Hence, the child becomes the caregiver. As a result, parentified children are forced to assume adult responsibilities and behaviors before they are ready to do so.

The ending was fantastic. I even highlighted one line:

"Es braucht so vieles in der Welt. Entschlossenheit, Mut. Rebellion. Aber es braucht auch eine Million solcher Herzen. Die nicht versteinern, die wach und warm und offen bleiben, ganz gleich, welche Narben die Welt ihnen zufügt."

But I don't want to give the book 5 stars because of the slow-paced reading. It took me 5 months to finish this book. If it had been more engaging, I would have finished earlier. That is why my score is:

4.3

Hello, I meant to tell you there is another group that you might like that is more active than this. It's called "BücherWelt & LeseRausch". We read books in German or English (and any group reads will be available in both languages), but all comments in this group must be in German.

Thanks Keen - this group seems to be sadly pretty much defunct, I'd love a more active German group!

I'm here to check all the books that are mentioned to get ideas of books I might want. I have to order all the German books I get, so I need titles or authors to keep an eye on in Goodreads .

Thank you. I will also join to that group.

Erin wrote: "Thanks Keen - this group seems to be sadly pretty much defunct, I'd love a more active German group!"

So would I! I joined this group about a year ago, but haven't posted because I couldn't quite figure out the instructions, and it didn't look like it was at all active.

I'm glad to help. I think there are some others around too. I'm not sure about whether to keep posting my books in this group or whether to just use it to find book I think I'd like to read.

G wrote: "Erin wrote: "Thanks Keen - this group seems to be sadly pretty much defunct, I'd love a more active German group!"

So would I! I joined this group about a year ago, but haven't posted because I couldn't quite figure out the instructions, and it didn't look like it was at all active."

Yeah, I stopped posting because I felt like I was pretty much the only one still here, lol. The other group Keen mentioned seems to be mostly popular English books just translated to German - that's not what I'm looking for. If I'm going to read a book in German, it should be written in German, or at least in another language I can't read - I read a lot in German translated from Nordic languages, also have read translated from Polish, Hungarian, and Turkish (which don't 'count' according to this group's rules, but that seems a moot point now...) I recently bought one translated from the Japanese that doesn't have an English translation. But not from English.

To find more books I'm interested in reading in German, I started following various German booktubers that share my tastes (so, not all romance and crime novels...) I now have probably more German books than I can reasonably get to, and keep accumulating more... oops.

ETA: just realized we're all posting in Leyla's thread. Good discussion, but we should probably move it to a new thread!

Good idea, There's a "Thoughts and Ideas" thread in the General Information section that's only got 18 comments. Lets move across to there.

Sounds good

I'm reading "Kaffee und Zigaretten" by Ferdinand von Schirach

I'm currently reading "Erkenne die Welt" by Richard David Precht.

I stopped reading these books. I'm currently reading "Adressat unbekannt", because this book is comparably shorter.

Adressat unbekannt sounds like it' would be a very thought-provoking book to read. I hope you like it. You can always go back to the others later.

Ich habe das Buch bis zum Ende gelesen. Es war fesselnd. Mit großer Spannung verfolgte ich, wie aus einer engen Freundschaft nach und nach eine erbitterte Feindschaft entstand.

I just realized that "Adressat Unbekannt" is not actually a originally German book. It's been written in English originally, so it doesn't count to my challenge. But it was definitely a heartbreaking read 😪