What I am reading

So far, so good. Still a very fitting novel in our day and age of beauty/youth craze.

This is so witty and funny! Especially compared to „classic“ utopias. Wells was obviously well versed in the tradition of utopian writing and took it upon himself to create a modern version of it by learning from the mistakes of past writers instead of repeating them and by adding a good portion of humour to the whole mix. His novella contains smart and very precise comments on many of the common flaws in classic utopian fiction – or to be more precise, on what from his modernist point of view would be perceived as flaws.

Yet, A Modern Utopia is not only a modern take on the idea of an ideal society in its content, but also in its form. Not only is the narrator easily distracted and therefore gets sidetracked frequently, but there is also his companion, the Botanist, who constantly bugs him and interrupts his train of thought with a failed love story (the relationship between those two characters is just wonderful).

I have to admit, that Wells’ Utopia sounded quite ok until I arrived at the obligatory chapter on women and marriage, because that’s usually the point at which the shit hits the fan for everyone who is not male. As much as Wells learned from past utopian concepts, it is sad and disappointing that he seems unable to imagine a world, in which women are not reduced to being mothers, but are socially and legally equal to men.

It took me quite a while to finish this book, because I was really busy and although this text is entertaining, it is quite demanding as well (some chapters are rather treatise-like). A Modern Utopia is by far the most intelligent, humorous and least nightmarish Utopia I have come across.

Maybe this is one of those cases in which I don’t see what everybody else sees, but I don’t understand why so many people praise this book for giving them great advice for their life/business.

While I would understand a Machiavelli-hype, because that man really wrote insightful and still relevant pieces of literature dealing with power and war, Sun Tzu / Sunzi (in my opinion) only states the very obvious and he does it over and over again (which is even more awkward considering how short this treatise is).

To save you some time, I let Obi-Wan summarise the crucial point:

Well, not so much new groundbreaking information so far.

I saw the Do I Have That Book? tag floating around since fall, popping up here and there (notably here, here and very recently there), and since I am still battling my cold at the moment, my head needs a break from serious reading and I hardly have anything better to do, I thought this could be fun.

1. Do you have a book with deckled edges?
As a matter of fact, I own ONE of those: This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
And just for the record, I hate deckled edges. They do not make a book look/feel more elaborated or fancy and are annoying when you try to turn the pages. It’s just a mess.

2. Do you have a book with 3 or more people on the cover?
I don’t own many books that have people on the cover at all (something I was not aware of before now, I guess). So after some digging Flappers and Philosophers again by Fitzgerald will have to do. No one said that it had to be actual photorealistic pictures of people instead of a drawing.

3. Do you have a book based on another fictional story?
Minae Mizumura based her long, but fantastic A True Novel on the shorter, but horrible story of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. And I am the proud owner of both.

4. Do you have a book with a title 10 letters long?
This was a tough one and it took me longer than I want to admit to find a winner: Don Quijote by Cervantes (if we are not counting the blank in between and I don’t)

5. Do you have a book with a title that starts and ends with the same letter?
After counting A LOT of letters for question 4, I was afraid, this one might take even longer. But lucky me, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is one of the first novels in my shelf.

6. Do you have a Mass Market Paperback book?
I used to have Stranger in a Strange Land sitting in my shelf, but I really dislike that book and recently gave it to my brother who still wants to read it. It is still within the family, so I feel justified in counting it nevertheless.

7. Do you have a book written by an author using a pen name?
The first one that came to my mind was Abram Terz (pen name of Andrej Sinjavskij). I bought this one used and never owned a dust jacket, so here’s a very unspectacular picture of my edition.

8. Do you have a book with a character’s name in the title?
After excluding the biographies (for this would be too easy and feel like I was cheating) I still have a lot to choose from. I think, I have to give this one to Gustave Flaubert for Bouvard and Pécuchet, since the title bears the name of not only one but both main characters.

9. Do you have a book with 2 maps in it?
Now it would come in handy if I liked to read fantasy. But I don’t. So here is somewhat of a hidden gem: Die Fahrt des Afanassij Nikitin über drei Meere von ihm selbst niedergeschrieben (the English title would be The journey of Afanassij Nikitin over three seas written down by himself). I guess it is the only book I have with more than one map in it, even though one of them is an old-timey map with sea monsters that should be regarded as more of an abstract portrait of the area somewhere around India, but hey, times were tough back then in the 15th century.

10. Do you have a book that was turned into a TV show?
I was almost giving up on this question, but yes, I do! I own Sharpe’s Eagle by Bernard Cornwell which was used as story material for one of the movies in the Sharp series.

11. Do you have a book written by someone who is originally famous for something else? (celebrity/athlete/politician/tv personality…)
Surprisingly there were a couple of candidates for this one. Initially, I was going to name either Captain Paul Watson (Earthforce) or Smokin’ Joe Frazier (Box like the Pros), but after some thinking, I have to give this one to the one and only Tom Baker – The Boy who kicked pigs.

12. Do you have a book with a clock on the cover?
No. And believe me, I looked.

13. Do you have a poetry book?
Of course! The collected works of my favourite Nikolaus Lenau. And there is more poetry where that one came from.

14. Do you have a book with an award stamp on it?
Not really to be honest. I am a bit picky when it comes to buying a certain edition of a book, that’s also why I gave away the only Mass Market Paperback I owned (see question 6) and I tend to stay away from the pretentious editions with huge ass award stamps on the front.
The only book I could find with a stamp/sticker on the cover (other than „now a major motion picture“) was How to Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee – with a sticker informing you, that it is the 50th Anniversary Edition.

15. Do you have a book written by an author with the same initials as you?
I… I don’t think so. How is this possible? Do I have to become a writer myself now?

16. Do you have a book of short stories?
I have a collection of short stories by Richard Matheson titled after the famous I am Legend, but containing eleven stories in total.

17. Do you have a book that is between 500-510 pages long?
Are you kidding me? What a strange question.
My first answer when I read the question was „sure, probably.“ and I didn’t really think of looking. But here’s the thing, I like a challenge. After my first suspects were either a little too short or way too long, I found the plays of Christopher Marlowe and guess what – 503 pages.

18. Do you have a book that was turned into a movie?
Since almost anything gets turned into a movie nowadays, there is a lot to choose from. But since Flaubert kicked this one out of question 8, here it is as an answer to 18: John dies at the End.

19. Do you have a graphic novel?
Of course! One of my all time favourites: The Killing Joke.

20. Do you have a book written by 2 or more authors?
And the Hippos were boiled in their tanks – a lovely cooperation between Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs with an admittedly horrible title.

Whoever made it down this far – feel yourself tagged!

This is definitely the literary groundwork for Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita in which the author tried exploring the major themes of his later masterpiece.


I remember when we had to read Master and Margarita at University and everybody in my course was crazy about how amazing, extraordinary and outstanding this novel is, whereas I was (and still am) wondering what all the fuzz is about. Needless to say, I chose to write about Dostoevskij and Turgenev at that particular final exam.
No wonder, that the novella D’javoliada is not my favourite as well. The scenes are just too bizarre and too loosely linked for my taste, they change quickly and constantly, setting and characters are switched out rapidly – all in all, it reads just like a fever dream. Although I suspect that this delirious state might very well have been Bulgakov’s intention in the first place.

Роковые яйца is an early novella by Bulgakov that can be categorised somewhere between magic realism and science fiction. The plot moves at a quick pace, it is witty and funny and filled with great and overall likeable characters out of whom I quickly fell in love with Pankrat.
Bulgakov clearly intended to make fun of early communism and it’s good to know, that Soviet censorship in 1925 was still cool enough to let it pass.

Since I caught a cold last weekend and am therefore borderline ill at the moment, I also got the translation of Bulgakov’s novella – just in case my head needed a rest from Russian I would switch to German for a chapter or two. I got tired, took the translation and after the third paragraph I was back to the original. Damn, this translation is unreadable. I more or less know the translator personally, but until today I have never read one of his prose translations and I am quite sure, that I will never pick one up again. It just feels awkward and cumbrous and for some reason more complicated and more antiquated than the original itself. That’s going to be a fun topic when we meet next time.

Bottom line: Роковые яйца is a great novella, but Nitzberg’s new translation is terrible.

Mandat was the first play written by Nokolaj Erdman. It is a great satire of the early Soviet days first and foremost dealing with the question of where to quickly get a communist when you need one without having to become one yourself.

It is definitely not as good as Самоубийца, because Mandat is more of a spectacle than social satire.

This is the play with which the nowadays almost forgotten playwright Nokolaj Erdman got into trouble with the Soviet regime.

Самоубийца is about the Soviet Everyman Semen Podsekal’nikov who gets talked into killing himself and all the people who are trying to turn his planned suicide into their own personal advantage.

Great dialogues, great characters, great story and great ending!

Looking back at 2019 I really liked a lot of the books that I have read, but as always, there were a couple of disappointments as well. Due to the fact that I also had to write my master’s thesis (which – heureka! – is finally done), I set my goal for the annual Reading Challenge quite low at 20 and for the first time in the four years I have been doing this, I successfully managed to meet this goal.

Before I start a new year of reading, I would like to take the time for a short retrospect and share with you what I liked and disliked and why.


The top 3 of 2019
First and foremost I would like to highlight Kallocain by Karin Boye as one of the best novels I have read this past year. It is not only an example of superb writing, but it features some incredibly strong scenes that are still on my mind and still get to me whenever I think about them.
Secondly, everything written by Bradbury, but especially his Dinosaur Stories, because they were so passionate and imaginative, that they outshine Fahrenheit 451 as well as Now and Forever in this regard.
And the third place goes to Lidija Čukovskaja for her novel The deserted House, the touching and bigger than life tale of Olga Petrovna that brought tears to my eyes.


The bottom 3 of 2019
I was immensely disappointed by The Undying Fire, not only because I highly admire H. G. Wells, but also because it had such a promising start. Overall, it is too lengthy and the structure depends too much on lining up monologue after monologue after monologue that it is hard to keep your interest up.
Another big letdown was Erwachen im 21. Jahrhundert by Jürg Halter. Again, I had quite high hopes, but unfortunately this novel is too pessimistic for my taste and it is so over the top cynical! Due to Halter being a poet rather than a novelist the text is also quite demanding, which is not a bad thing per se, but in this case it is so overflowing with so much at the same time that I reached a mental overload multiple times.
Finally, Siri Hustvedt’s What I loved was by far the worst. Too descriptive, too ivory-tower elitist, a complete lack of inner logic and in my opinion, a bunch of unbelievable and uninteresting characters.


Honourable Mentions
There is one book I would like to add as an honourable mention: Simon Stålenhag’s The Electric State. Since I primarily bough it, because I had already fallen in love with his artwork a couple of years ago, I was not disappointed, even though the storyline is a little on the weak side.

With The Hunting of the Snark Lewis Carroll wrote a fantastic “Agony in eight fits“ that puzzles and fascinates audiences since 1876. Without going into too much detail: it is beautiful and I simply love it!

This is the annotated edition which means, that there are more explanatory footnotes than actual text of the ballad. Of course, reading elaborate and long footnotes is no fun at all, but they do help a lot in understanding contemporary allusions and puns. Without them, I would have never known what on earth a bathing-machine is or what a Billiard-marker does.

I did not enjoy What I loved. I also don’t know why I sometimes force myself to continue reading certain books, although I clearly don’t like them. I already quit reading Hustvedt’s novel two or even three times before, so I guess, I really wanted this to be good, but it is just not happening for me.

Some of the peoplely parts were really good, featuring touching moments as well as believable and intense descriptions of the relationships between the four or ten protagonists (depending on how you count), but then there were also lots of random excursus and lengthy descriptions of artwork. They are way too numerous, too long, too detailed and practically irrelevant, so I started skipping them completely, which is something I normally never do. The same goes for most of the descriptions and characterisations in this novel, they just drag on and on without really going anywhere.
I also never warmed to the characters themselves. They are way too artsy for my taste and the whole thing is just elitist as fuck. Hustvedt obviously did a lot of research and wanted to incorporate as much as possible in the novel, but most of the time it turned into boastful academic name dropping. So although the characters are well and exhaustively described, to me they did not come alive and felt very flat throughout. There was something forced in all of them that just turned me away.

I do not understand how What I loved got so many good reviews. I am not even sure, whether this novel can really be described as ‘intelligent’ or if it is just superficially pretending to be. I was missing coherence and logic and to top it off, this was one of the worst, most half-assed endings I have come across since Bruce Robinson’s fucked up attempt of turning Hunter S. Thompson’s Rum Diary into a movie.

Simon Stålenhag is undeniably featured on my personal “Top 3 contemporary artists“ list. I am fascinated by his post-apocalyptic landscapes, littered with enormous remnants of battle ships, robots and drones, set against gigantic glowing buildings and orbs in the background, sometimes half covered in mist. He conveys the peace and quiet of any idyllic landscape and combines it with the eerie feeling of a devastating catastrophe about to happen.

What I am trying to say is, that I love his art. I really do. I like it so much, that the narrative featured in The Electric State was secondary to me from the very beginning, which was good, because the storyline is only ok. It’s not bad, but it’s also nothing notable and it lacks power, especially in comparison to the incredible art. If I could rate art and story separately, Stålenhags drawings would get 5/5 stars, but I cannot give the story more than 2/5 (or, if I was to be really generous, 2,5/5).

So I am nearing the part in this book, where I quit reading last time and although I admittedly do not remember very much story-wise, I do remember what made me stop reading back then: there are way too many exhaustive descriptions of artwork! For pages Hustvedt is dwelling on paintings, sculptures, installations, cut-outs of various figures in various colours and materials and whatnot. Those descriptions are too long, too detailed, they interrupt the decently interesting storyline, and above all, they've already become repetitive.

This is another truly great novel by Lidija Čukovskaja.
The story takes place in a convalescent home for writers and artsy people a little bit outside of Moscow in 1949. So the Great Purge is over, but the USSR is still under Stalin’s rule, antisemitism is thriving, you still have to watch out what you are saying in front of other people and the Khrushchev Thaw is still a few years away.

Like many other novels taking place in a sanatorium, Čukovskaja portraits a handful of people who went there in order to be cured of whatever sickness they might struggle with, but also to find some peace and quiet to work and to battle their own demons. In the case of the protagonist, this means trying to deal with the loss of her husband who should have returned from the Gulag two years ago, although she doesn’t even know, if he made it that far or if he was simply shot right after his interrogation twelve years ago.

The writing is once again amazing. Just breathtaking. Čukovskaja has a very clear and simple prose, through which she conveys an enormous array of emotion. In only two or three words she can create a complex imagery that would take Tolstoj probably up to ten or fifteen to develop. Needless to say, many parts of her writing really go under your skin, even more so because she is often quite straight forward and does not sugarcoat anything.
I tremendously enjoyed Going Under, although I have to admit, that The deserted House had a bigger impact on me.

This is the drama which introduced mankind not only to the word ‘robot’ but also to the concept of an inevitable war between humans and machines. R.U.R. (or W.U.R. in this German translation – a strange, yet very smart translation of the title) was written in Czechoslovakia in 1920 and holy crap, this is an awesome piece of literature!

In a certain sense, Čapek wrote a timeless piece. Kind of like the 1993 Jurassic Park movie, some technology got used which is very much outdated by now, but everything else is still fresh as heck. I belief, that the reason why we can still enjoy R.U.R. almost 100 years after it was written so much, is, that it is a very human drama. One that deals with the very basic and never changing motifs of love, empathy, fear, ambition, greed, human hubris (kind of like Jurassic Park, now that I think about it) and on top of that it throws in a bunch of robots.

The structure of the drama is great, the characters are great, the plot is great, the dialogues are great, R.U.R. is just plain great!