Community Reads: George Sand, Lea Ypi, Jerome K. Jerome, Anaïs Nin
Get to know our community and their reading highlights.
We continue our Community Reads, where fellow readers from our community can share their favourite books or what they are currently reading. This time we have four exciting book recommendations. Starting with Dominik, who joined our last edition for the first time; Rebekka, who apparently is the fastest reader in the city; Ned, whom we were happy to meet at Reading Room #3 and Laura, a friend from Barcelona with whom we might have exciting news to share soon.
Got a book you love? Tell us about it! Send us the title, a short text (it could be a summary, a quote, why you picked it or your personal thoughts – whatever helps others get a feel for it), plus a photo. We can’t wait to hear from you.
Title: Nanon
Author: George Sand
Translation: from the French, by Heidrun Hemme-Oltmanns
Publisher: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag
Surprisingly, George Sand isn’t as ordinary as it might sound. Although it was common to use an allegedly male pseudonym as a female writer to get recognition, the perspective of Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin de Francueil – alias George Sand – on the French society of the 19th century shows its very own realm. Not only the advanced play of words elevate Sand to the elite of storytelling, also her intersectional view on secularity, class and gender is outstanding for its time.
In their last book, under the title Nanon, you are allowed to fully dive into the world of a young girl under the name Nanon, who has to find her place in an ongoing change of circumstances. With the French Revolution and the enlightenment, everything around her seems to end in chaos, yet her intellect and own will guide her and her friends through rough times. A novel worth reading.
—Dominik Mörmann
Title: Frei. Erwachsenwerden am Ende der Geschichte
Author: Lea Ypi
Translation: from the English, by Eva Bonné
Publisher: Suhrkamp
I recently read Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi and really loved it.
I wasn't specifically looking for the book, but found it by chance at the Berliner Büchertisch on Gneisenaustraße, which sells second-hand books. I had already read a recommendation for the book on Instagram and decided to give it a try.
In the book, Ypi describes her childhood and youth in Albania in the 80s and 90s, the time when the dictatorship in Albania collapsed.
Without glossing over the dictatorship under Hoxha, Lea Ypi describes what it means when the entire previous political system collapses – especially for a child who grew up in this system and was heavily indoctrinated at school.
At the same time, she questions whether the so-called “freedom” for all in capitalism can really be described as such when the freedom it supposedly offers is often reserved for a small group of people.
I can also highly recommend the Berliner Büchertisch. They often have relatively newly published books, and (in addition to the German section) there is also a section for English books.
—Rebekka Dietsch
Title: Three Men in a Boat
Author: Jerome K. Jerome
Publisher: Penguin Classics
I moved to Berlin in October of last year to write my PhD dissertation. I am a mathematician. Four and a half years in, it is the hardest project of my life. The last six months have been relentless.
I have been helped limping along by methylphenidate and the many expected and unexpected joys of this city. Poetry nights, dancing, writing groups, independent cinemas. In a winter defined by an exhausting and specific exercise in production, I finally became the perfect media consumer.
I watched films, even actually getting to some of those on the list; I listened to music most hours of most days; and I have been reading everywhere I go (which is less places than I did before): parks, the U7, mismatched furniture-fronted coffee shops, queuing for gallery openings, queuing for almond croissants that are too expensive but worth it, leaning against most solid objects in the street.
This writing period has been one of loneliness in a city of still new friends. Some of them, though, are starting to grow older and I began reading Three Men in a Boat sat at a bar in Mitte where one such friend works, in the last dregs of the winter. It was a surprise. It is distinctly English, Victorian in fact, and I only picked it up at Pequod because it was referenced in a play my family and I saw when I visited them in London. The book is delightful, really actually funny in a way century-old "funny" books mostly are not, and occasionally quite beautifully written, with the courage to allow those moments to sit undisturbed amongst the comedy. It was a silly little gift that inaugurated spring for me. I am grateful for it and will never look at a tin of pineapple or the river Thames the same again.
—Ned Summers
Title: The Novel of the Future
Author: Anaïs Nin
Translation: from English to Catalan, by Santiago Albertí
Publisher: DOPESA
I picked up this book having never read Anaïs Nin before, and I’m so glad I did. The title drew me in, and the first chapter – Come out of the dream, outward – had me returning to it time and again.
She begins, “It is interesting to return to the original definition of a word we use too often and too carelessly. The definition of a dream is: ideas and images in the mind not under the command of reason. It is not necessarily an image or idea that we have during sleep. It is merely an idea or image which escapes the control of reasoning or logical or rational mind. So that dream may include reverie, imagination, daydreaming, the visions and hallucinations under the influence of drugs – any experience which emerges from the realm of the subconscious.”
What follows is a poetics of the emotional, the non-linear, the intimate. She writes of process, diaries, abstraction, eroticism and the tension between emotional truth and narrative form, building her case for a literature rooted in the subconscious.
It’s a small book. Elegant, lucid, deeply felt. A beautiful way to meet Nin, or return to her.
Picked up secondhand, worth seeking out anywhere.
—Laura Cabiscol