Being at home reading books
KINFOLK (Volume 11): Since I am a little girl I am a loyal magazine consumer. With all my magazines I read over the years I had my own rituals of consuming. For example I always started reading the new volume from the end as I was already excited what was coming next. The best articles I read last. I kept them like little treasures for a special moment. When looking back I can say each magazine accompanied me in a seven year circle and ended a rite of passage. So I came to thinking that the anthroposophic way of thinking life goes in seven years steps might really be true. When my magaznie and I drifted apart a new magazine was already waiting for me in the shelf that all of a sudden caught my attention- up to now. Well, the last months I drifted between several magazines, but none felt right…then I stumbled over KINFOLK. What should I say: I found a new friend for the next seven years. I am always sad when finishing a good book. It is like an intensive small affair that opens the door to a new world. A good magazine is like a new friendship. We will see maybe KINFOLK becomes a friend for life.
My favourite sentence in Volume 11: “I’ve come to savor those rather uneventful moments, such as curating a photo exhibit on my fridge that few will ever view.”
KINFOLK feels like an anthology of short stories carefully curated and selected with love. You can soak in other people’s persectives of little things in daily life. The “HOME” volume felt a little bit like reading in a friend’s diary.
Sunset Park by Paul Auster: “Coming of age” in new dimensions: not only the main character, the 28 year old Miles Heller is drifting like the “Catcher in the rye”. It’s also his 60 plus dad and all the other people in Miles’ surroundings with the US financial crisis in the neck.
My favourite sentence (I translated the sentence from my German book version): “It feels good to be somewhere else for a few weeks, at some other place but in your own head”.
HIPSTER WIRD’S NICHT by Uli Hannemann: Berlin is the home of my heart. I have a special connection to this city that has always been by home when being in a liminal stage. Uli Hannemann is among the variey of author’s writing about Berlin my most favourite one: razor sharp descriptions of current life in the “Kiez” Neukölln from the view of a “real” Berliner. For me the incorporation of the “Berliner Schnauze” and its humour. Nearly each sentence felt like a citation I wanted to keep in mind becoming part of my own vocabulary.
Most favourite word learnd: wohlstandsverwahrlost – That’s how the main character in the book characteries the average Berlin Hipster.
Also really good by Uli Hannemann: Neulich in Neukölln
Der Mond flieht by Rax Rinnekangas: I think books from the far north all have this implicit mysticim and this subtle threat like a thriller and so does this book about a childhood in summer in Finland. I admire Rinnekangagas ability to catch the thoughts of thirteen year old children on their lives in the liminal stage between childhood living in your own fantasy world and adolescence that is accompanied with a loss of innocence on different levels.
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Really enjoyed Sunset Park as well
Not too US centric?
it is pretty US-centric, yes, but I learned loads about the love for baseball and about American intellectuals:) What I liked most about the book is the drifting of the people in their post-adolescence with the American crisis in the back…This drifting is a sign for my whole generation that is suddenly 30 but does not at all has the standard of living as their parents did.
didn’t get the BB references either