Category: Books I read

Books I’ve recently read and/or liked. I only link to a book or author if they have their own webpage and never link to Amazon or Goodreads. Buy your books directly from the author or from independent bookstores if you can.

There’s also a more complete OPML file that is both human and machine readable, that you can check out: my booklists

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Bought this book by German author Phillip Schönthaler (1976) last February in Switzerland, after already considering it while in Berlin the October before, on paper. The narrator (which is the author) explores various scientists around the development of rockets, atom bombs, and computing, and their connection to fiction writing. This was published in 2024, and it reminds me a lot of Benjamin Labatut‘s The MANIAC and When We Cease to Understand the World, from 2023, and 2020 respectively, which I read August last year. As a result I’m left wondering if I really enjoyed this or not, or that I was just reading the German language version of a familiar story. I also bought some of this author’s non-fiction to explore.

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Early January in Nijmegen I browsed the second hand book shelves of the Dekker v.d. Vegt book store, when we visited the city for a day. I came across and bought The Nano Flower by Peter F. Hamilton, a 1995 novel.

At the time I did not realise it is the final part of a trilogy, and later realised I did not read the other two. Bought the other two back home as e-books online, Mindstar Rising from 1993, and A Quantum Murder from 1994. Read the first two e-books earlier in April, and the paper book during a brief spring holiday last week. All three are entertaining, set in a near future UK after the climate urgency has hit full-on. The final book builds on the previous two books, veering into first contact and more space oriented SF, than the other two.

Good fun.

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Debuutroman 2024 van Koos, shortlisted voor de Libris Literatuurprijs 2025. Kwam het tegen bij Bijleveld in Utrecht eind maart. Prachtig rauw en scherp observerend geschreven, vol emotie.

Ik associeer dit boek met Homo Faber (1957) van de Zwitserse schrijver Max Frisch (1911-1991). Dat las ik als tiener eerder als handleiding voor het onderdrukken van emotie, maar in de wetenschap dat dat zich zou wreken. Rouwdouwers las ik vol mededogen. Ik las het uit op een bijzonder heldere aprildag vliegend boven de golf van Biskaje op weg naar Lissabon, denkend over wat thuis (kunnen) komen betekent.

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A beautiful, and at times raw book, of lives lived along the Thames and Tigris rivers, all woven together by the endless cycle of water molecules. Very enjoyable. Shafak (Wikipedia) is a French born (1971) Turkish writer, who writes in Turkish and English. Will explore her other work.

I came across Elif Shafak by coincidence, stumbling on an article she wrote about writing and expressing emotion in different languages, even if you’re only acquiring a new language, and how multilingualism is never merely serial monolingual, it’s a tapestry. Bought this book after reading that article.

Read in April 2025.

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Vor aller Augen, before everyone’s eyes, this German language collection of chapters takes us through art history. For a series of famous paintings of women, each story gives voice to the women portrayed outside the artefact’s frame. Sound concept. Some of these vignettes felt contrived however, and some I would have loved to read several chapters more, or a full novel even, to see the story develop. Picked this 2022 book up in a Zurich bookshop in February, after reading the 2021 Die Erfindung des Ungehorsams last year. Clavadetscher (1979) is a Swiss playwright and author. Looking forward to reading more fiction by her.

Read in April 2025.