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Books I read in April

Sylvia Plath / The bell jar

A student is on a Trip to New York. She has a difficult time there as she struggles to feel excitement. When she comes home she falls into a depressiv episode. She wants to kill herself and tries or plans on doing different things to kill herself. She ends up in a psych ward where she meets someone she knows.

The first time I read the book I didn’t like it so I‘m glad I gave it a 2nd try because now I love the book even though it is very depressing. We get such a clear look into the main characters psych and how she deals with her suicidal thoughts. I love how deep the novel goes and how true and pure it is. I also like the writing style a lot, it’s easy to read even if english isn’t your 1st language.

Dostoevsky / The house of the Dead

The house of the dead is a collection of stories in a prison. Important topics are discussed like freedom and philosophical questions are asked. We also get a view into the prisoners daily life, their struggles and their routines.

This is definitely my least favorite novel by Dostoevsky. I think it was the topic itself which didn’t interest me so much and some chapters were really boring I even skipped two chapters. It also has some more interesting parts like Christmas in prison but all in all the boring ones were more than the interesting ones. It also had a different structure than other novels by Dostoevsky, it is more autobiographical and we don’t get a such a deep insight into the characters since some are only discussed in one chapter and aren’t present in any other chapter furthermore. So there are many characters and many different stories.

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writers and artists will go "this isn't good enough." my brother in christ, you're creating something new out of nothing and expressing yourself creatively. your productivity and unrealistic standards of perfection do not define you or the worth of your art. you're doing great.

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i feel so shit when i‘m surrounded by people i will never feel a sense of belonging.

and then some people wonder why I‘m always alone

nobody should suffer this much

life shouldn’t be this hard

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Books I read in March

Virginia Woolf / Mrs Dalloway

„Kill yourself, kill yourself for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it.“

Septimus is traumatized by his years in the army and losing his friend. We get a look into his life and how he sees the world: very threatening but also beautiful. Septimus wants to kill himself, he says over and over again. His wife seems ashamed and doesn’t quite know how to handle the situation. Then there is the other protagonist Mrs Dalloway, she invite many people to a party, old friends and her past lover. We get to see how fast people grow old, they talk about memories like it was yesterday. We also realize that Mrs Dalloway is much like Septimus.

It was my 2nd time reading this novel but it’s the first time I read it in english. It’s not so easy to read since there are many characters and the situation/atmosphere changes very quickly. I have to admit the first time I read it I didn’t like it because I didn’t understand it well but after getting used to Woolf‘s writing style it‘s easier to read. I love her writing style so much because you get such a great insight into the characters mind and it feels so lively, so real. Even though bad things happen I still find the atmosphere very comforting and I wish to live in one of Woolf’s novels. Still I got lost especially at the end of the novel when the party is happening because there were so many characters. My favorite chapters are the ones with Septimus I find him such an interesting character and also relatable so I would love if there would be more chapters about him. All I can say is that it’s a great book but even after reading it the 2nd time I still got confused and lost sometimes so I feel like I need to read it a 3rd and many more times to fully understand.

Mary Shelley / Frankenstein

„How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!“

Victor Frankenstein creates his monster who he abandons as he sees his satanic look. The monster haunts him and begs that Victor creates a female companion so he must not be alone. The monster seems like evil as he kills some of Victor‘s family yet he is also human like with a heart that loves nature and other human being. So we ask ourselves who is really the monster Victor or his creation?

I read it the 2nd time but in english unlike the first time I read it. I enjoy this novel a lot. It’s the father of horror so I think everyone who likes horror should read this novel. Unfortunately in movies we see the creation as something evil when in reality it has a lot in common with its creator. I love the scenes where the monster just wanders around in nature, it is a nice atmosphere in which happens so much horror.

Stefan Zweig / Angst (fear)

„She could not read anymore, she couldn’t do anything, demonic chased by her inner fear“

Irene is married to a young man whom she betrays with a pianist. Her secret affair will soon be the subject of her fear which almost leads her into death.

I enjoyed to read this novella a lot, I think it has the potential to be longer so the only bad thing about it is that it is so short. I felt the fear of the protagonist. Like in many novels of Zweig we get a clear insight into the protagonist‘s soul. It is very beautifully written and the storyline is also good and very exciting.

N. H. Kleinbaum / Dead Poets Society

„We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion.“

Five boys find out about this mysterious Dead Poets Society which was invented way back when their inspiring english teacher was still a student. They go into a cave and have their meetings. Besides that we also experience love, trouble with their parents and fulfilling their dreams beside all the struggle.

I like this novel a lot, it’s easy to read and the atmosphere is beautiful. My favorite character is Todd because I could relate a lot to him and it’s very nice seeing everyone making a process even though the end is very sad. Yet the process the characters made isn’t gone and their experience will always be in their hearts.

Dostoevsky / The Gambler

„Do you know that one day I'll kill you? I won't do it because I'm no longer in love with you, or because I'm jealous, but—I'll just kill you for no better reason that I sometimes long to devour you.“

The gambler is about a man who we watch slowly get addicted to gambling. We get to see his downfall. We get to read about the very complicated relationships with Polina, a grandma whom everyone wishes to be dead to get her money suddenly she appears into the picture, perfectly healthy. It’s about obsession and a reflection of Dostoevsky‘s addiction to gambling.

At the time I read this novel it was difficult to me to concentrate but I was still able to read it so I would say it is one of the lighter novels (even though it was my 2nd time reading it). It is exciting, at times it feels like you yourself is sitting in the casino. The relationship with Polina is also full of obsession just like the gambling. It is interesting to see how the narrator slowly falls into gambling addiction. I like the end a lot since it’s open but we can assume that the narrator didn’t stop gambling.

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sea, swallow me

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"My brother used to ask the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless but it is right; for all is like the ocean, all things flow and touch each other; a disturbance in one place is felt at the other end of the world."

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, from “The Brothers Karamazov”, originally published c. 1879–1880.

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Books I read in February

Jon Fosse / Morning and Evening🎣

A child is born, a man dies, that’s the cycle of life. Fosse gives us an insight in the metaphysical world of a man who is dying and the magic of a child being born surrounded by the calming atmosphere of the Norwegian landscape.

I loved the beginning of the novel, it was my favorite part. It reads like a work of classical music, the music starts softly and gets louder and louder always interrupted by soft tunes in between which seem to sneak around the room. It’s a very smooth book to read. By the 2nd part I was a little confused since I didn’t know what it was about and I thought the protagonist is just hallucinating. Overall it’s a nice book to read and very smooth.

Dostoevsky / The double 🎭

On a mysterious night Golyadkin meets his double on a bridge. They become friends, they fight, Golyadkin‘s identity gets stolen. It’s an endless search of the real identity and the question remains „Who am I?“ We do not know for sure if Golyadkin is going insane but he seems to be very paranoid and insecure which are his main traits, so seeing a double of himself who is liked by others brings him into rage.

I couldn’t get into the story, I couldn’t focus, my mind was wandering off the whole time and I don’t know if that was because I couldn’t focus in general or the story didn’t catch me. I think both play a role. So I was confused the most time and didn’t know where the people were and what is going on but maybe that also represents Golyadkin‘s state of mind. To me it really came through how the weather reflects the inner state of the main character in this novel. Also I felt like there was, despite the very unfortunate situation, a lot of humor in the novel. I also think the topic of identity is very interesting so maybe it’s just how it is being told which kind of bored me because the story itself sounds interesting. I liked the beginning since it’s very mysterious and we don’t know what is going to happen but then the novel lost me. I personally didn’t find it too interesting since it’s a lot about the main character‘s work place and to me the other characters weren’t as lively as I am used to when reading Dostoevsky. I might give it a try some time again since, like I said, focusing was very hard at the time I read it. But it’s totally normal and can happen sometimes that you read a book and your mind wanders to different places and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just happens.

Dostoevsky / The gentle one 🎀

In „The gentle one“ we get a look into a pawnboker’s mind moments after his wife’s suicide. Everything starts out very chaotic since his wife is still lying in the apartment and it is no wonder that it is difficult to think in such a situation. Throughout the novel we get a clearer view on the situation, like the narrator says, he wants to tell the truth. Soon we realize that his mind is clouded and didn’t see moments like they were. So it’s the readers task to look through his words and see how the situation actually is, which isn’t always easy. Keeping in mind that the pawnbroker is much much older and his wife is a young girl in need, having nearly no money, we can assume the power this man has over his wife and the fear she must have felt. But the narrator tells the story in a whole different tone, almost like he was the victim.

Albert Camus / A Happy Death 🌌

„And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence— they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved.“

As the title says, the main question of the novel is „How to die happily?“ There are two parts in this novel. The first part is about Mersault‘s „ordinary“ life. He doesn’t have enough time or money, he isn’t living he is rather just existing. In the 2nd part Camus shows us how it can look like to be happy. We see Mersault freeing himself of all these circumstances that made it difficult to be happy. In the novel we can find many connections to his other work The Stranger, even though there are also many differences, but I see it going together since it is said that The Stranger grew out of this novel.

A happy death is my favorite novel by Camus, i love the atmosphere and it gets rid of my fear when I read it. I read it around two years ago for the first time and it changed the way I think and feel about certain aspects in life. It helped me to get out of the state of existing and start living and feeling (even though I have to mention that by only reading the novel, it won’t do that for you but it definitely helps). It can teach to live no matter the circumstances, it can teach be to feel happy (but not joyful) even if you feel miserable. To take every every bit of nature into your body. And it teaches how you don’t need to be successful, how you don’t need anything to be happy. It gave me a different view on happiness but it was only the base. This book has such a great impact on my because of what I made out of the knowledge. I enjoyed the chapters where Mersault was just walking around and living his life because it had something so relatable. My favorite parts are the ones in the house above the sea because it seems so nice there and I also want to live there! Of course the last chapter is also my favorite since it makes me feel calm. When I think about death I (no longer) think about fear, I think about peace.

Stefan Zweig / The Heart‘s Impatience 🫀

„For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone that identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom.“

The heart‘s impatience is the longest novel of Stefan Zweig. Hofmiller, a young lieutenant visits a wealthy family who‘s daughter is paralyzed. His main motivation for visiting them is the feeling of compassion. Condor a doctor treats the daughter and reveals some interesting facts about medicine like the treatments are mostly there to motivate the patient, not to cure the illness. Everything ends in a tragedy since Edith, the paralyzed girl is in love with Hofmiller which turns into an obsession (Zweig‘s common topic in his novels).

I have to admit that I expected more from this novel. I found it not so interesting, only the last few pages really got me. The doctor is a very interesting character and I also liked Edith but I wish that Zweig would have gotten deeper into those characters. Also it made me question the feeling of compassion a lot and that it might not always be the best thing to show to people, maybe the harsh truth is better and would have avoided the tragedy. It has some good lines and the topic is interesting but the story itself and how it is being told didn’t catch me.

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Hermann Hesse, from a letter to Stefan Zweig written c. February 1903

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James Baldwin.

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Love always,

Charlie

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The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice. 

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

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Franz Kafka, from a diary entry featured in "The Selected Diaries of Franz Kafka,"

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"and mersault, in silence, felt in himself extreme and violent powers to love, to marvel at this life with its countenance of sunlight and tears, this life in its salt and hot stone- it seemed that by caressing this life, all his powers of love and despair would unite."

albert camus, a happy death, 1972

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I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves. - Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

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Robert Bly, "Depression," from A Mind Apart: Poems of Melancholy, Madness, and Addiction

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Books I read in January

Franz Kafka / Complete stories 🏢

This year it’s the 100 anniversary of Kafka‘s death so I decided to start this year with a book which contains all his short stories 💓 I‘m obviously not going to talk about every singe one of them because there are so many so I picked a few I liked a lot and the longer ones.

What I really like about Kafka is that there are so many ways to interpret his work, you can even find a new way to interpret it and you always make your own work out of it in a sense that it can be about your life and your feelings and you feel understood by it because it describes how you‘ve been feeling all these years, you just never found the right words for it. So it speaks to you in a very special way since it’s not only talking to you but it is what you make it. Maybe I just feel that way because I read Kafka’s biography/letters and I feel very connected to him so I don’t know how people experience it who don’t relate to him as a person/his letters that much.

• Resolutions

I swear I had this short story on my mind all day, every day! I read it some months ago but I think I didn’t quite understand it well and I always came back to it and read it so many times and it found its way into my heart! It describes so well how I feel and what I‘ve been doing for years, it also made me quite sad. For me this story is about always getting up, always finding your way out of a terrible state (which is relatively easy) yet you are pretending and deep down you still feel miserable. So the only way to break this circle is to not only accept your misery, but also „throttle down whatever ghostly life is remained, that is, to enlarge the ultimate peace of the graveyard and let nothing else exist besides that.“ and not even get better, not even try because it’s not worth the effort and you are tired. You finally just want to feel peace and stop this war within yourself.

• A Report to an Academy

I liked this story a lot and it also made me feel understood. It feels like such a deep story but on the surface it’s a very funny one, it’s about an ape who becomes human-like since he is forced to live among humans and is being dragged away from his real home. Especially the feeling of isolation and never feeling any sense of belonging, like there is something inherently different/wrong about you but you have no choice but to adapt to a society that just doesn’t fit to your world, that came through to me. You don’t adapt, you are going to die but believe me you still have to suffer, even if you function in this society, you will always be different deep down. But it’s also about identity and the animal part in us humans. I read it more like the ape was just a metaphor for a human who is very different from everyone else. I know my 12 year old self would have loved the story and would have felt so understood, so I‘m sad that I didn’t find it earlier.

• The Judgement

You get to know a lot about Kafka himself when reading this story since it’s about a father and son relationship and marriage (a topic which he always feared and avoided). It’s very tragic and while reading it makes me so angry at the father and i‘m just in disbelief. You have to consider that Kafka wrote this story in one night and you have to imagine what he felt. It was also one of the first stories he wrote, so one of his first experiences what literature can do for you and that it is a place to let out anger and find relief, that it is a place where everything can happen. I think you can feel what he felt while writing it also the fact that he wrote it in one session really comes through.

•The Burrow

The burrow is such an interesting story, for me it’s all about paranoia, loneliness yet longing for others and always this vague anxiety. The protagonist (an animal) is very paranoid because he always hears this noise and is afraid someone will take over his burrow. I feel like it resembles Kafka‘s relationships with woman, he is scared to let someone into his burrow, he is scared to get out of it to go into the real world. I also felt like the burrow pictures his mind and his work with it‘s many floors and the mindset that it has to be perfect yet being very anxious about it, about what if it’s broken, what if there is something wrong with my burrow (me and my mind?). So I won’t let anyone in it. There is also this part of the protagonist wanting to drown in his work, not wanting to be part of the outside world. I think you can interpret this work in many different ways and that’s just how I personally feel about it. Also it ends in the middle of the sentence and you don’t know who will win, the threat (the noise) or the protagonist. Kafka wrote this story at the end of his life so it can be also interpreted like the noise (the threat) is coming from inside the animal and is the illness that’s slowly killing him yet always getting louder. I think it’s such a good metaphor because when you‘re ill it feels like there is always this noise in the background that gets louder and louder and will eventually kill you. Also in his other short story „Advocates“ there is this loud noise and I see them in a connection.

•The Metamorphosis

It’s what Kafka is known for, the bug became a symbol even though he wrote to a publisher that the bug can’t be on the cover because „it can’t be drawn, it can’t even be shown from a distance.“ It was very painful to read and you could feel the despair, the shame and the guilt. It left me with a very painful and uncomfortable feeling when Gregor had the apple stuck in his back even when I think about it now I feel very uncomfortable. I see that this is so legendary because at the time it was written it was new and there was nothing like this. Still today there is nothing like this work and it is as legendary as it was back then. I think it’s very easy to understand and to relate to so I understand why so many people love this work. There are already so many interpretations on this work so I‘ll just leave it for now.

• A Hunger Artist

A Hunger Artist who’s talent it is to not eat loses slowly the recognition of society. This story goes hand in hand with Josephine the Singer since in both of them the protagonist is an artist and they are both about the life of an artist and their relationship to the public, their struggles and their uselessness, they worked themselves to death for nothing, they didn’t even get the recognition they longed for. Even though it is written with a lot of irony, it has something very true to it since artists often struggle to survive in this society and often don’t get the recognition they deserve even though they destroy themselves by working so hard and dedicate their whole life to their work.

•Josephine the Singer

Josephine the Singer always whistles and is ordinary yet the people come and listen to her voice. This is Kafka’s last work he wrote and it resembles the state he was in, very ill, seeing death coming but also looking at it with some kind of peace. At the beginning I was kind of confused and didn’t understand the story, so I think it is important to know that this was his last work in order to understand it better. It gave me a feeling that Kafka was still anxious that his work isn’t good enough and he will be forgotten.

• The Penal Colony

A gruesome machine which exists to kill the condemned is the protagonist in the Penal Colony. The other characters seem like nothing more than a role, a solider, a officer, a visiter and a condemned. When Kafka read this story publicly (one of his very few public readings) it was a very big scandal, it is said that people were passing out and running out of the place because the story is so nauseating. The Penal Colony was written during the first world war so it can be seen as a reflection and comment of those times where brutal tortures were common.

The first time I read it I had a very different experience then when I read it now. All I remember from the first time I read it is that it was making me feel very nauseas and I was shocked by the brutality. When I read it now it didn’t have that shocking effect because I already knew what is going to happen (yet it is still nauseating of course!) Now I felt a lot of satisfaction while reading because this immense pain one can feel isn’t just something vague in your body, it becomes something logical and solid (the machine). What’s within you becomes material out of your body so you’re just letting it out. It might sound very masochistic to say it like that but I think you can find a lot of relief in the Penal Colony.

Stephen Chbosky / The Perks of being a Wallflower 🪻

„You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.“ I didn‘t know that other people thought things about me. I didn’t know that they looked.“

Charlie starts his first year of highschool and is quite anxious about it so he writes anonymous letters to a stranger (a person he just heard about). We watch him try to „participate“ more in life, like his english teacher Bill told him to. He finds friends, loves, tries drugs and makes some mistakes. Throughout the letters we get to hear a lot about his Aunt Hellen who died in a car crash. It begins and ends with this mysterious figure, where we, by the end of the novel, get a clear picture about.

I read this novel the first time 1,5 years ago and it inspired my writing a lot, there are many quotes in it which I still think about today. Also it is my comfort book. I felt terrible and decided to read it again. It’s easy to read and it has so many nice moments. I also love the characters! By the end it made me cry so much i don’t know why. Finishing the book is really the worst part because it’s my comfort and then when I’m finished I don’t have any comfort anymore so I read it very slowly. Also it made me realize how I don’t participate in life at all and don’t even attempt to do that and that just made me sad. I felt it so much when Carlie thought there was something off about him and when he felt panic when Sam touched him :(( It will always be one of my favorite books and i know it’s always there to comfort me so I‘m a little sad that it’s so short even though I think it shouldn’t be longer. Also the movie is actually really good because the writer of the novel is also the director of the movie but some of my favorite parts are missing in the movie. I watched the movie before I read the book and I feel kind of sad about that because I already had a clear picture of the character and the place in my head before even reading it.

Hermann Hesse / Narcissus & Goldmund 💒

Goldmund, an artist meets Narcissus, a soon becoming monk at the cloister school. They teach each other important things about life and lead each other on the path that is meant for them. You see Goldmund grow and find himself throughout the novel while he goes on long hikes, doesn’t have a home and meets many many lovers but also other people who become friends or enemies. It’s a lot about longing and desire but also about finding one‘s path. Narcissus and Goldmund are so different yet they are bond for life.

I didn’t know what the novel was about so I read it with zero expectations but I definitely didn’t expect it to be a gay romance novel so I was surprised. I mean you can’t make me believe that Narcissus isn’t totally in love with Goldmund. So my expectations were high after the first chapter, not only because of the characters but also because the way nature was described is very beautiful and I loved the whole atmosphere at the cloister. I could imagine it so well as I had to study cloisters the time I read the novel I could imagine it even better and was in the mood for it. When Goldmund leaves the cloister and is going wild for girls I was getting a little bit bored, it’s just not a topic I‘m interested in and it made me kind of uncomfortable to read. But then the part of him being an artist and finding himself are great and there are very beautiful passages in every chapter. The end was really beautiful again and I definitely think this novel makes you think and can teach you some things but I feel like not everyone will like the language or relate to the characters. So I‘m really unsure about this novel because I loved the beginning and the end but the middle part wasn’t so interesting to me. I haven’t read a book like this so it’s really special, I’m just unsure what to think about it. At times it touched parts of me that remained untouched and i also enjoyed reading it but sometimes it just made me feel weird. Overall it’s very beautiful, it creates a special atmosphere but there is something about it that makes me feel weird and uncomfortable even though it can be comforting at times. Maybe it’s just that the novel leaves me kind of empty and clueless, I can’t really say what’s bothering me. But I will still read other works by Hesse. Since this was my first one I shouldn’t judge too hard, maybe I just need some time and read some more works to get a greater understanding of his language.