Reading list for April 2006
Currently reading
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics
Terry Pratchett, Die Nachtwächter
Recently read
Peter Handke, Wunschloses Ungluck
Peter Handke, Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers
Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times
The first Handke on the list, Wunschloses Ungluck, is a biography of his mother up to her suicide in 1972. It's harrowing reading, precisely because he maintains his usual affectless just-the-facts-ma'am tone throughout, leaving it to the reader to be alternately infuriated and shocked by the social conditions under which they lived. The title says it all (in a magnificent example of the expressive density of (a certain kind of high-level) German, I need a sentence to explain two words): the common saying "wunschlos glücklich" means "so completely happy that there is nothing left to wish for;" the invented saying "wunschloses ungluck" means "miserably unhappy but there is nothing, no hope of improvement, to wish for." Their lives were not nearly as miserable as Angela's Ashes, but then again the misery there was partly self-inflicted: no food for the children, but she always could afford cigarettes? Selfish bitch.
I've spoken before about my doubts about Cormac McCarthy, but The Crossing is completely convincing. I twice had to restrain myself from quoting long sections of it here. The meeting with the hermit in the ruined church is by itself worth the price of admission. Wonderful!
Terry Pratchett crossed my radar several years ago, but I ignored the signal because I felt that there was a bit too much enthusiasm being expressed. Well, the hype is in large measure justified. Very witty, very funny.
Freakonomics is fascinating: apply economic reasoning and plain common sense to the real world, and some very surprising conclusions are the result. It's a Readers' Digest book, twenty years of dense thinking reduced to ten test cases and a hundred'n'something easy-reading pages. Somebody once compared reading the encyclopedia to eating Chinese takeaway, an hour later one feels ignorant again; Freakonomics has a similar effect. Get it from your local library.
In other news writing this on Wednesday in Munich, I am surrounded by a cloud of mosquitos. It really is summer.
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Labels: reading
posted by Udge @ 23:48
6 Comments:
hi udge, I've read that wunschloses Unglueck, too, but it was a long time ago. found it a rather sad description of that life of thse women (wasn't it about his mother?) or rather to say a sensitive handkelike description about this sad life...
So glad you're reading Freakonomics! Like Levitt says, there's no theme to the book but that doesn't take away from how interesting the patterns and similiarities are between sumo wrestlers and teachers, McDonald's and crack-dealing and the way names work their way down the socioeconomic ladder. It makes you look for other idiosyncracies in the patterns around you.
You infidel!!! How can you read Pratchett IN GERMAN? For his you learnt English? OY.
Lioness: hey, I take what I can get. The english-language Pratchetts are always booked out & reserved well in advance, so if I see a german one just sitting there, I pick it up. Call it "sympathy for the underdog" or some such thing. But yes, they are much better in English.
BTW nice new gravatar!
So glad you discovered Pratchett. He is a very silly man.
If you ever get a chance to read Once More With Footnotes, do. If only for a short story called The Sea and Little Fishes.
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