We’ve arrived at the time of year when we’re racking our brains over what to get family and friends. A headache that, on the other hand, is unnecessary: often a small but well-chosen detail brings more joy than anything worth a lot of money. There are many gifts that could be categorized as “personal”, but one of them is undoubtedly a book.
Admittedly, even the idea of giving a book as a gift may sound old-fashioned for the 21st century to some. But when you get hooked on a particular book, you’re just as addicted as you are to your favorite TV show – if not more so. And the following five books certainly had us hooked:
Sally Rooney, “Beautiful World, Where Are You”
Publisher: Claassen
The world as we knew it no longer exists: we have left economic, professional and relationship stability behind us. We live hyper-connected and overtired lives, scrolling through Instagram in the hope of finding something, we don’t know what.
In Sally Rooney’s latest novel, four friends forge and sever personal bonds as they try to survive a great existential void. They try to understand and help each other, getting swept up in the daily grind and clinging to anything that can bring them back to a world that no longer exists.
Alena Schröder: “Young woman, standing at the window, evening light, blue dress”
Publisher: dtv
The life struggles of generations of German women within the same family over the years: 27-year-old Hannah, an estranged teenager, and her grandmother Evelyn, an older woman with a hidden past. When a letter from Israel identifies Evelyn as the heir to a stolen and lost art fortune, Hannah sets out to discover the secrets of her mother, her grandmother and her unknown Jewish family.
Alena Schröder’s fast-paced, atmospherically dense novel can be read both as an exciting art thriller and as a thought-provoking and conciliatory book about the silent conflict in a family from the women’s perspective.
Anna Wiener, “Code kaputt: Power and Decadence in Silicon Valley”
Publisher: Droemer Knaur Verlag
An insider’s account of a person who was part of the all-powerful American technology industry. New Yorker Anna Wiener reveals the hidden face of Silicon Valley, infected with alienating corporatism, misogyny, long hours and a ruthless control over 21st century citizens.
Drawing on her own personal experiences, Wiener describes her own digital transformation from the New York publishing world to the world of Silicon Valley start-ups at the height of the digital revolution, with great clarity and in an ironic tone that avoids platitudes.
Raphaela Edelbauer, “DAVE”
Publisher: Klett-Cotta
DAVE, winner of the Austrian Book Prize 2021, is a uniquely exciting and thought-provoking reflection on the past, present and future of artificial intelligence. In a laboratory designed to create the first general artificial intelligence with human consciousness, programmer Syz’s life is thrown off course when the project threatens to fail. She must investigate the dark history of the lab and find out whose interests this artificial superintelligence really serves. Actually, this book is only worth a gift if you want to scare the gifted.
Helene Hanff, “84, Charing Cross Road: A Friendship in Letters”
Publisher: Atlantik Verlag
In 1940, the young writer Helene Hanff began a correspondence in New York with a small London bookshop, Marks & Co. at 84 Charing Cross Road. Today, this bookshop exists only in the pages of this novel – a collection of the letters exchanged over 20 years between the author and her bookseller Frank Doel. A simple business relationship develops into an unexpected (and endearing) friendship that grows out of a love of literature.
Warm, funny, human and bittersweet, 84, Charing Cross Road is a story about the special place that books – and bookshops – have in our lives.