Fallada, Hans "Every Man Dies Alone"

Fallada, Hans "Every Man Dies Alone" aka "Alone in Berlin" (German: Jeder stirbt für sich allein) - 1947

A remarkable tome. A remarkable story. A remarkable narrator.

Hans Fallada learned about the life and death of the married couple Elise and Otto Hampel and retold their life story. He immortalized them as Anna and Otto Quangel and thus created a monument not only to them but also to all the other little resistance fighters. All those who didn't want to just watch society go to the dogs. Who didn't want to be accused later of not having done anything.

Yes, they did exist, the Annas or Elises and Ottos. They tried desperately to wake up those close to them, perhaps to persuade one or the other not to just accept everything or - even worse - to think it was good.

To this day I still can't really understand how people could just watch. My parents told me different stories, about their parents trying not to get carried away and still offer their children a future. Today I see how many things are repeated. How people believe any story just because they hear it often enough.

Get Hans Fallada and other writers like him back into schools. Let children share in all the things that can go wrong. Otherwise we'll be back very quickly where we've been before and where we never, ever wanted to go again.

From the back cover:

"This never-before-translated masterpiece - by a heroic best-selling writer who saw his life crumble when he wouldn’t join the Nazi Party - is based on a true story.

It presents a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis and tells the sweeping saga of one working-class couple who decides to take a stand when their only son is killed at the front. With nothing but their grief and each other against the awesome power of the Reich, they launch a simple, clandestine resistance campaign that soon has an enraged Gestapo on their trail, and a world of terrified neighbours and cynical snitches ready to turn them in.

In the end, it’s more than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, more than a moving romance, even more than literature of the highest order - it’s a deeply stirring story of two people standing up for what’s right, and for each other."

#ThrowbackThursday. Love in the Time of Cholera

García Márquez, Gabriel "Love in the Time of Cholera" (Spanish: El amor en los tiempos del cólera) - 1985

We came to the conclusion in our book club that it is difficult for us Western European women to understand a Latin American man. We still liked this novel, the style of the book but not the characters which made it difficult to like the book on the whole. We still hate it when a woman doesn’t have control of her life.

We discussed this in our international book club in November 2008.

Read my original review here.

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Top Ten Humourous Books Written by Women

   

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish". It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.

This week, our topic is Hilarious Book Titles

I have done "Funny Book Titles" before. And "Books That Made Me Laugh Out Loud".

Since I don't read many books like that, I could either come up with the same titles as last year or start something completely new.

Whoever knows me, will guess correctly, I found a twist. I've listed a few humourous books written by women. Authors, comediennes, others. These are all funny books and luckily, most of them have written more than one book but I will include only one, either the first one they wrote or the first one I read. I hope you will find a few authors among them that you also like.

Brown, Rita Mae - The Hunsenmeir Trilogy (Six of One/Bingo/Loose Lips) - 1987/88/99

Ephron, Nora "I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman" - 2006 (short stories)

Fox, Kate "Watching the English: the Hidden Rules of English Behaviour" - 2004

Hanff, Helene "84 Charing Cross Road" - 1970

Khorsandi, Shappi "A Beginner's Guide to Acting English" - 2009

Perkins, Sue "Spectacles" - 2015

Roach, Mary "My Planet. Finding Humor in the Oddest Places" - 2013

Russell, Helen "The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World's Happiest Country" - 2015

Scott, Mary "Breakfast at Six" - 1953

Truss, Lynne "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" - 2005

I hope you find a few books among them that you will also like.

📚 Happy Reading! 📚

Némirovsky, Irène "La Proie"

Némirovsky, Irène "La Proie" [The Prey] - 1938

I'm amazed how someone can write such a brilliant book in times of trouble. Granted, the Nazis hadn't come to power, yet, but there was so much anti-Semitism all over Europe that any Jew must have been worried, especially those with such a sensitive understanding of the world like the author.

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, then Russia. Her family fled to France during the Russian Revolution but they never received French citizenship. She was Jewish but converted to Catholicism. Not that it helped her. She was deported to Auschwitz and died there in 1942, aged 39.

"La Proie" (The Prey) is not about anything like that. It's about the life of Jean-Luc Daguerne who marries a rich heiress in order to move up in life. His dreams and plans his successes and failures. He rises in society both politically and financially but he doesn't care much about his wife, family, relationship to friends and colleagues.

I don't want to tell much more about the story in order not to give too much away. Unfortunately, the book has only been translated into very few languages (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, so similar languages) but should you speak French, I can heartily recommend this relatively short novel.

Book description (translated):

"'Nothing is more bitter than to see superhuman efforts yield so little happiness. There is only one possible consolation: to say to oneself that there is no happiness.' Published for the first time in 1938, this novel with Stendhalian accents recounts the social rise and then the fall of an ambitious young man, Jean-Luc Daguerne, that love for his beautiful will lead to his loss. On this proven plot, Irène Némirovsky makes the words dance with humor and brilliantly plays with human passions and the cruelties of fate. But this Prey nevertheless owes a lot to the Roaring Twenties, their tragic energy, their shattered hopes. It is this frantic race towards the abyss that makes them modern."

And from another edition:

"Portrait of a Julien Sorel * of the 1930s against a backdrop of economic crisis, rising unemployment and widespread anxiety, La Proie is the novel of a world that is tottering. A tragic love story, this intimate and cruel tale traces the rise and fall of a young man of humble origins. Betrayed by the beloved woman, after having lived a pure passion with the heiress of a dynasty of bankers, he decides to take his revenge. But can we force fate? A mixture of recklessness and seriousness, of impatience with the future and lightness of living, as often with Irène Némirovsky, La Proie is a restless and lucid novel that bears the imprint of this great writer, crowned posthumously by the 2004 Renaudot Prize for French Suite."

* from "Le Rouge et le Noir" (The Red and the Black) by Stendhal, 1830.



I read this as part of my Paris in July experience and to add another classic novel to my Classic Spin list.

I also read "Suite Française"

Six Degrees of Separation ~ The Book of Form & Emptiness

The Book of Form & Emptiness
Ozeki, Ruth "The Book of Form & Emptiness" - 2021

I used the covers of the original titles because I like them more than the translated ones and I read them in the original languages (except for "The Name of the Rose" which I read in German)

#6Degrees of Separation:
from The Book of Form & Emptiness to The Pillars of the Earth

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.

This month's prompt starts with The Book of Form & Emptiness (Goodreads) by Ruth Ozeki.

I haven't read this book. Or heard of it. And first, I thought I'll go with the ideas I get from the title, a book about emptiness, for example. But then I read the description of the book:

"After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house - a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

At first Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world, where 'things happen'. He falls in love with a mesmerising street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.

And he meets his very own Book - a talking thing - who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz to climate change to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki - bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking."

This made me thing about a book by a German author that has made it around the world. It's also about a boy who interacts with a book, he actually enters it in order to save a fictitious world with a princess in a tower.

Ende, Michael "The Never Ending Story" (GE: Die unendliche Geschichte) - 1979
This story reminded me of another German author who was very successful abroad and wrote a book where people come out of a book into the world of a little girl.

Funke, Cornelia "Inkheart" (GE: Tintenherz) - 2003   
I was reminded of another little boy who lives in a world of his own.

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine "The Little Prince" (F: Le Petit Prince) - 1953
The first three books were all more or less children's books that take place in a fantasy world. There are few books that I read from that genre but here is one that I really enjoyed, taking place on a different (non-existing) planet.

Stephenson, Neal "Anathem" - 2008
The protagonists in this novel all live in a monastery kind of world and that made me think of one of the most famous books about the inhabitants of a monastery.

Eco, Umberto "The Name of the Rose" (I: Il Nome de la Rosa) - 1980  
Coming to my final book, one of favourites, I think about it every time I hear about monasteries and cathedrals which I highly recommend, together with its sequels/prequels.

Follett, Ken "The Pillars of the Earth" (Kingsbridge #1) - 1989
So, I ended with a book that does describe a form, that of a cathedral. Whether there is emptiness inside, everyone must decide that for themselves.

Look for further monthly separation posts here. 

Book Quotes of the Week

  

"I like books. They’re quiet, dignified and absolute. A man might falter but his words, once written, will hold." Luke Arnold, The Last Smile in Sunder City

Good point. And books don't argue with you, they just give you the opportunity to think for yourself.

"Because paper has more patience than people." Anne Frank

Another good point. Paper's patience is endless.

"I have this weird obsession about buying books and looking at them with a smile, even if I won't read them soon. At least they are mine now." Anaïs Nin

Who wouldn't agree more than an avid reader?

Find more book quotes here.  

#ThrowbackThursday. Tulip Fever. The Tulip. Tulipomania.

 Moggach, Deborah "Tulip Fever" - 1999

Amsterdam, 1630. Wealthy merchants. Famous painters. Love and Betrayal. Rise and Fall. A lot of subjects in a book that really has only one major topic: Tulips and what it meant to the people of the 17th century in Holland and Flanders. Some bulbs would yield the price of a house in the most expensive quarter of Amsterdam.

One of the novels most book club members really loved, it is very interesting both from the historic point of view as well as the story itself.

We discussed this in our international book club in November 2007.

Pavord, Anna "The Tulip" - 2004

A good addition to "Tulip Fever". The tale of this flower that is known to us as "THE" Dutch flower today but has a long history and a long way to get there. It was brought to Europe via Turkey from a lot further East, its exact origin is still not known. Beautiful illustrations which make the book even more special.

 

 

 

 

Dash, Mike "Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused" - 2000

A very interesting additional read to what was really going on. A fascination story with a lot of extra information about the craze about Tulips in the 17th century. It almost reads like a crime story.
 





Read my original reviews here: Tulip Fever, here: The Tulip and here: Tulipomania