2022 in books
In which i read a lot.
In 2022 i read 35 books, which is 5 less than i wanted to. This year i aim at reading 50 books, and we’ll see how this goes. While I read more then ever these days, nothing will beat my pandemic reading year from 2020, where i sucked down on nothing less than 61 books. Alas, here we are, so 50 books is a nice goal for 2023.
In my reading, I like to flip between short pulp novels, textbooks and nonfiction and dense, complex tombs. I read a few crappy short pulp novels (E.T. 2, Das Millarden-Bewusstsein) and they were objectively terrible, but no book this year disappointed like Andy Weirs Project Hail Mary (dt. Der Astronaut). This is what i wrote in my Goodreads and I stand by every word: “All the 5 star reviewers are out of their mind and delusional. Sloppy science, all characters are basically the same, many plotholes, and all held together by the writing of a highschooler. Will be a good movie i'm sure but the book sucks.”
The best thing I read in 2022 surely is Dan Simmons Hyperion (Omnibus-edition with both novels). A complete blast, extremely dense and complex, but also pulpy with some remarkable action sequences. The 1400 pages were absolutely worth every minute and they even have a Saint Teilhard (De Chardin), whose real life version wrote a philosophy classic about the evolutional convergence of all consciousness into what he calls the “noosphere”, which i also read this year.
The next best thing, and maybe even superior to Hyperion, albeit completely different, is Marlon James A Brief History of Seven Killings. The prose is an absolute joy to read through and the plot is basically what would happen if you put Pulp Fiction, City of God, Bob Marley and the 70s music scene into a meatgrinder. Thrilling, sometimes completely bonkers, artfully written from the perspectives of gangsters, ghosts and spies. Hyperion doesn’t need much praise, it’s one of the genre classics, but if you only read one book this year, make it A Brief History of Seven Killings.
Here’s the rest in reading order, annotations as they come.
Jack Vance - The Dying Earth (dt. Die sterbende Erde) — Very dated ideas and plotpoints and I don't like this tendency of old scifi/fantasy-stories to go full fairytale/myth-style as in "dude walked along minding his business when suddenly out of nowhere the villain just pops up and wow then the central plot location is just down the road" and so forth. But I did really like the structure, the loosely interwoven vignettes of magic adventures on a dying earth with returning characters. Nice, albeit dated. (★★★☆☆)
Gordon R. Dickson - The Pritcher Mass (dt. Das Millionen-Bewusstsein) — Stupid and lame pulp. (★☆☆☆☆)
Lee Child - Killing Floor (Jack Reacher 1) (dr. Größenwahn) — I love Reacher and this was my 4th novel. I sucked up all the movies and the series and I absolutely love how Lee Child constructs near perfect action sequences and fighting scenes, where he tells you every smallest detail in every move in every fraction of a second. This is action pulp at its best, albeit you can feel that in the first one Child was still finding his way and his stakkato-style is near annoyingly extreme. (★★★☆☆)
Arthur C. Clarke - 3001: The Final Odyssey (dt. 3001: Die letzte Odyssee) — Dissappointing final entry in the Odyssey-saga. No real plot, just a 1000 years old guy looking in awe at the achievements of a future, that hasn’t aged too well. I thought about shelving the thing at the genetically manipulated dino-gardeners, but pushed through. This doesn’t hold a candle next to the psychedelic masterpiece that was 2001. (★★☆☆☆)
Scott Smith - The Ruines (dt. Dickicht) — Don't get the praise. Its nice for pulpy horror but its nothing special. (★★★☆☆)
J.G. Ballard - Myths of the Near Future (dt. Mythen der nahen Zukunft) — Shortstory-collection of varying quality featuring many of Ballards motifs from architecture, sex, decay, psychology and war. Didn’t like the first few (i’m not big on his surreal stuff, i think they often stand in the way of otherwise interesting stories). I did like the rest though and two of them (Motel Architecture and The Intensive Care Unit) are highly relevant today, telling stories of total isolation in a surveilance state and the effects of electronic communications on the human psyche. (★★★☆☆)
Stanisław Lem - The World as Holocaust (dt. Das Katastrophenprinzip) — A bit dated, but its still nonfiction by Lem and as such its a short lucid tale of a weird theory which today seems a bit obvious (life is the product of the destruction of stars), but its entertaining and mind boggling, nevertheless. I love Lem. (★★★★☆)
Lee Child - Die Trying (Reacher 2) (dt. Ausgeliefert) — Didn't like it as much as the first Reacher, but its still a Reacher. (★★★☆☆)
Samira El Ouassil und Friedemann Karig - Erzählende Affen - Mythen, Lügen, Utopien — A great and necessary book about how stories, myths and narratives form our reality and how this mechanism can be exploited. The first half is a very good overview of storytelling theory and the changes that come with our new (social) media environments. The second half is maybe a bit too focussed on contextualizing those theories in contemporary politics, but thats not a real critique. (★★★★☆)
John Brunner - A Maze of Stars (dt. Labyrinth der Sterne) — Nice idea (an intelligent spaceship travels through a galaxy inhabited by various human societies and examines the colonies it created), unfortunately the writing makes it boring and it’s much too long. The ship doesn’t really work as a main character, it’s story remains too nebulous and is not really resolved. In addition, a terribly stiff and almost presumptuously cumbersome language with paragraph-long convoluted sentences that separate and obscure contents from one another. I'll give Brunner another chance with The Shockwave Rider, but this was lame. (★★☆☆☆)
Theodore Sturgeon - Visions and Venturers (dt. Psi-Talente) — Good collection of pulpy scifi-fantasy-shortstories. (★★★☆☆)
Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings (dt. Eine kurze Geschichte von sieben Morden) — An absolute blast and one of my favs this year, see above. (★★★★★)
Edmond Hamilton - Captain Future and the Space Emperor (dt. Die lebende Legende) — I wanted to love this because I love Captain Future in the anime version, but this just sucks. (★☆☆☆☆)
Stefan Buijsman - Ada und die Algorithmen — Nice book for AI starters. Personally i didn’t get much out of it because i wrote about roughly a quarter of its content in my old blog and the rest was familar too. But i enjoyed it, learned some details and it’s intelligently written. (★★★☆☆)
Stanisław Lem und Stanisław Bereś - Lem über Lem — Lem is best when he's wildly speculative, so the first section (biographical) and the last (classic philosophy) don't really do it for me. The Rest is just Meta-Lem at his finest. (★★★★☆)
Whitley Strieber - The Wolfen (dt. Wolfsbrut) — Confused, uneven storytelling, stretched with boring first person wolf parts. The interesting stuff about corruption was not resolved and just deco fodder. The movie made some excellent choices and is far better than the book. (★★☆☆☆)
Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination (dt. Die Rache des Kosmonauten) — This book is praised as one of the scifi canon classics and after reading it, I get why Stanislav Lem despised his own genre. This is rubbish. If this is a classic, then wow. Near unreadably bad prose, stuff just happens then fades away, character stumbling from situation to situation, plot holes as big as siberia. It has some rich imaginary, but not much else. (★☆☆☆☆)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Le Petit Prince (dt. Der kleine Prinz) — What a sweet book. A well deserved classic of children literature. (★★★★☆)
John Williams - Augustus — A wonderful, beautiful book. I’ve read my share about the classic period, but nothing made it come alive like this one. (★★★★☆)
Stephen King - If It Bleeds (dt. Blutige Nachrichten) — King delivers, as always. Some shortstories and a novella ranging from good to wonderful (The Life of Chuck). (★★★★☆)
Henkjan Honing - Der Affe schlägt den Takt: Musikalität bei Tier und Mensch — A very interesting subject made boring. Reads like a scientific paper sometimes and some more music would’ve worked well with it. (★★☆☆☆)
Maja Lunde - Blå (dt. Die Geschichte des Wassers) — I liked the first bee-book, but this was some boring schmalz with uninteresting clichéd characters. (★★☆☆☆)
J.A. Baker - The Peregrine (dt. Der Wanderfalke) — A subtle dark piece of literature about obsession and escaping society through ornitology. (★★★★☆)
Eugen Herrigel - Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschießens — A classic of meditation and the art of mastery. It’s good, but also reads mighty dated. (★★★★☆)
Dan Simmons - Hyperion Cantons (dt. Die Hyperion Gesänge) — Absolute blast, see above. (★★★★★)
Andy Weir - Project Hail Mary (dt. Der Astronaut) — Stupid sucker, see above. I’d rather read another one-star Captain Future novel than this crap. (★★☆☆☆)
Karl R. Gegenfurtner - Gehirn & Wahrnehmung — I’m trying to deepen my knowledge about neuroscience and for textbooks, this was a good, non-boring, beginner-to-medium-level introduction to the brain and all its workings. A good start. (★★★☆☆)
Jeff Hawkins - A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence — I haven’t read Minsky on the brain, so I can’t tell how much Hawkins lifted from him, but I enjoyed this book. The second half feels redundant and unnecessary, but the first half presents his theory of how our cognition works in very readable and clear language, which is not a given for this subject. (★★★☆☆)
Joe Hill - Full Throttle (dt. Vollgas) — I bought this for the son-father-cooperation with Stephen King alone, while i had a short lived obsession with motor horror. It’s a short story about a bunch of bikers fighting against a psychopathic Trucker, it’s great, and the rest of the book is awesome too. I like Joe Hill and I think he already stepped out of the shadows of his famous dad. (★★★★☆)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Man's Place in Nature (dt. Der Mensch Im Kosmos) — De Chardin is a classic of hivemind-thinking and this book is the remarkable culmination of his life’s work. A jesuit pastor turned anthropologist and philosopher working on a book that fuses evolutionary theory with religious thinking and describing what we today call hivemind or collective consciousness. Much of the book is dated by now, and it’s not an easy read, but if you’re interested in this stuff, it’s a must. (★★★★☆)
Andrew Hunter Murray - The Last Day — Cool scifi pulp with a nice premise (earth stops rotating, hence the ‘last day’), which is not written pulpy at all, but a nice story of a woman discovering corruption and herself in a journey through a dystopic england. (★★★☆☆)
Naomi Alderman - The Power (dt. Die Gabe) — I’m not the biggest feminist of the bunch so i had some reservations going into this book, but wow. For a politically loaded scifi book with a relevant subtext this was a great read, ambivalent enough to break up tired clichés and full of great, gripping action bordering on outright horror. (★★★★☆)
Dennis E. Taylor - We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (dt. Ich bin viele) — Lazy scifi romp with a nice premise that should have been interesting to approach in writing, but Taylor does nothing with the split personality aspect of his story. His multiplying AI-guy just multiplies, and none of the more schizo sides of this story are just unexplored. You get some random space action instead. Wasted opportunity, but at least it was entertaining and not as stupid as Project Hail Mary. (★★☆☆☆)
William Kotzwinkle - E.T. - The Book of the Green Planet (dt. E.T. - Das Buch vom grünen Planeten) - I was in the mood for some Spielbergian space sweetness, but I got this instead. Kotz means ‘puke’ in german. Nuff said. (★☆☆☆☆)
Michael Ende - Mehr Phantasie wagen — Michael Ende, author of the famed Neverending Story, despised being filed as a author for childrens literature. This book collects some theoretical texts of his, gathered from lectures and interviews, in which he lays down his view on the nature of art and the power of imagination. It’s an inspiring short little book, but unfortunately it stays only on the surface of things and his wisdoms feel somewhat anachronistic at this point. A good read nevertheless. (★★★☆☆)
yeay! thanks!! ich lese zZ Hesse - Lesebuch, KG Compilation aber ich empfehle dir Moris Berman - Wandering God oder Coming to our senses. Liest du Kindle?