Looks like we all leveled up to being a full book club, now that General is sadly gone.
Here is all I read in March:
12. Das Buch des Totengräbers, Oliver Pötzsch, 448 pages
13. Der Heimweg, Sebastian Fitzek, 400 pages
14. Delta-v, Daniel Suarez, 560 pages
15. Geschichten aus der Heimat (Tales About the Motherland), Dmitry Glukhovsky, 448 pages
16. Du musst nicht von allen gemocht werden (The Courage to Be Disliked), Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga, 304 pages
17. Der Schrecken (Eerie), Blake Crouch & Jordan Crouch, 300 pages
18. Der Zementgarten (The Cement Garden), Ian McEwan, 208 pages
19. ZERO - Sie wissen, was du tust (Code Zero), Marc Elsberg, 512 pages
20. Haus der stillen Schreie, Timothy Stahl, 102 pages
Das Buch des Totengräbers:
Plays 1893 in Vienna. The policeman Leopold von Herzfeld tries to help modernizing the way the police works by setting the groundwork for modern criminalistics. These for the time advanced methods will soon be necessary as a murderer, soon mentioned in the same breath as Jack the Ripper, is murdering numerous maidens in cruel fashion at night. When it comes to investigating the corpses, Leopold needs the help of the mortician Augustin Rothmayer, heir of a family that has been in the mortician business for a long time. Little do they know what they will unravel along the road.
Great book. Reminded me a bit of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles setting wise. Not available in english, sadly.
Der Heimweg:
Saturday, 10 PM: Jules Tannberg is working for a free hotline that is designed to provide company for women who walk home at night. The first call is by Klara, who feels followed by a man, the so called calendar killer. Klara claims that the killer will go after Jules too. And soon enough Jules can hear noises in his appartment...
Book kind of sucked, to be honest. Hamfisted twists that don't make sense fully, unbelievable characters. The writing is weirdly disjointed - it sets up a twist at the end of the short chapters and then you turn the page and immediately see that the twist was a ruse - that way of writing would make sense if this was like a weekly feature in a newspaper or something but not in this format.
Delta-v:
2030 : James Tighe is a cave diver in his thirties, who recently managed to save himself and a small group of people by escaping a collapsing underwater cave. Soon after, he gets contacted by the billionaire Nathan Joyce with a wild offer: to participate in the first ever attempt to mine asteroids in space with a small group of other risk liking people. The training process is rigid and Nathan Joyce is willing to do anything to make the project a sucess.
Great book. Much better than Influx that I read last year.
Tales About the Motherland:
Twenty satirical short stories about Russia and its culture. From a guest worker getting caught up in organ trade, to the arrival of aliens not making the news as reports about the presidents good doings take up too much time, etc.
Good book and mix of humour with serious undertones.
The Courage to Be Disliked:
Put that on my reading list after @Yomuchan read it last year. Book is structured as a discussion between a young man and an old(er) philosopher about Alfred Adler. Greatly enjoyed it and think the writers did a great job of explaining the concept of Alfred Adlers individual psychology in simple words.
Eerie:
It's a cold autumn day back in 1980, when the seven years old boy Grant and his younger sister Paige almost die in a car accident, together with their father. Thirty years later, Grant is a detective and his current case brings him right to the doorstep of his sister, who broke contact with him. At first sight, her husk look makes her think that she had a drug relapse but little does he know what dark secret is looming in the shadows and devouring his sister.
Good book. Nice creepy atmosphere.
The Cement Garden:
After their fathers deadly heartattack and mothers long disease ending fatally, four kids find themselves as unsupervised orphans, left for themselves around the time of summer vacation, in a crumbling down neighbourhood. To avoid getting put in an orphanage, mothers body is buried in the basement and hidden under badly mixed cement. But just as the cement crumbles, so does this warped up way of living.
Decent book. Probably would have suffered more from the the shock value if Earthlings by Sayaka Murata didn't crush the glass ceiling of the most frigged up stuff I have ever read.
Code Zero:
Data is money - and when you choose up to sign up for the new Social Media site Freeme, you will get money in exchange - the more you share, the more you get. On top, Freemee provides a variety of digital algorithmic-driven guides that analyse your personal data to give you advice how to improve yourself - your likeability, chances of getting your desired job,etc.
Freeme is criticised by an anonymous group called ZERO - a group that aims to make people wise up about big companies collecting data and using it to manipulate, well everything.
Soon however, Freeme is in trouble as one criminal who was on the run was chased by other Freemee users who used digital glasses with Augmented reality running with Freeme software to chase after the suspect, ending in one the chasing teenagers getting fatally shot.
That leads the journalist Cynthia Bonsant to inivestigate Freeme - and it seems like some of the algorithmic-driven guides have dire outcomes.....
Good book.
Haus der stillen Schreie ( "House of silent Screams"):
Daniel and Kenny left the house they grew up in behind. That is until the gruesome death of their father forces them to return the place of their childhood. As it turns out, they way their father died was more gruesome than first imagined and the first stepstone to unravel some cruesome secrets of the past.
Solid horror book. Doesn't seem to exist in english.
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