GRL: Omissions

Today I continue my thoughts on the German Reading List (GRL) I recently finished. You can view the complete 52-book list and my top 11 recommendations for background if you wish.

No reading list can be perfect or complete. My GRL had less than half as many books as the prior British Reading List I tackled when we lived in England. But whether a list is 50 books, 100, or 200, you'd hit the same problem: you can't read it all. There will always be notable works omitted. 

I capped the GRL at ~50 books for a few reasons:

- our tour here (2.5 years) is shorter

- it was harder (or more expensive) than I anticipated to obtain some of the desired books in English

- limits forced me to focus on what I suspected were the most important (or at least a good representative of a given genre, author, or style)

I was glad I did. Nevertheless, I know I missed some good ones, and I wanted to document a selection of those here for my future reference and general awareness, should others desire to undertake a similar task. With that said, here are works, authors, or topics I wish I had read (or read more). 

DW's "100 German Must-Reads"

I compile reading lists, in part, through Google searches for 'best of' lists. DW's list of 100 German books (written since 1900) that "you must read" was one of my references. You can find the PDF list on their website. I read only nine of the 100 recommended, but found each to be excellent, suggesting the list is done well. If I had more time, I would have done more from this list, to include:

- Alfred Doblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz

- Lion Feuchtwanger, The Oppermanns

- Anna Seghers, The Seventh Cross

- Ernst Lothar, The Vienna Melody

- Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum

- Gert Hofmann, The Film Explainer

- Christa Wolf, They Divided the Sky

- W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

Older Literature & People

DW's list is great, but it covers only the last 120 years. What about older works? Here are a few authors or topics I'd have liked to cover more:

- Hans von Grimmelshausen, Simplicius Simplicissimus

- Johann Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

It would be nice to delve into books about artists- or at least, books featuring their works. Durer, Hans Holbein, Caspar David Friedrich, and so on.

- Norbert Wolf, Albrecht Dürer

- The Complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer

Germany has many famous classical music composers. I'd have enjoyed books about musicians Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, and more. But what kind of books? Biographies? Or should I expand the reading list to include music, and have listened to these composers instead? 

What about philosophers? I didn't investigate this space at all. But I should probably explore Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. And though he's not a philospher, I'd include Freud in the group. I'm not keen on this area, so I'd love to find a work that surveys the field.

History

You can't read enough history. If I had more time, I would have studied the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, and the Third Reich more (yes, even Hitler's book):

- Joachim Whaley, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire

- James Charles Roy, The Vanished Kingdom

- William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

For historical fiction, I enjoyed Oliver Pötzsch's The Hangman's Daughter, and would explore more by him (like The Castle of Kings).

Fantasy

I fell in love with Germany fantasy writing. If only there were more of it! Some titles I'd check out that I missed in my initial sampling:

- Markus Heitz, The Dwarves

- Kai Meyer, Pirate Curse

- Bernard Henne, The Elven

- Cornelia Funke, the remaining two books of the Inkheart trilogy

- Michael Ende

I may get to these titles and topics someday. But as we prepare to move back home, it's time to develop and focus on my next list.