Hi everyone, I am looking to improve my German. I understand quite a bit by now but my spoken language is still child-like (I am somewhere B1+). Reading has always been something I enjoy. That being said: any (good) books you could recommend that are written by German-speaking writers and are “easy” to read? Just to say, I am not looking for children books - I need to be engaged with the story to read it. Thanks!
I had a pretty good time reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. I remember it for expressing deep thoughts with simple sentences, which imo makes it perfect for a B1.
Also, Demian. Really enjoyable book. Maybe it is a little more steep for a first book, but it is not impossible to read and the way Hesse writes makes it really good.
Ime, german does not translate well to other languages meaning that the writing complexity is kind of lowered or flattened through translation, if that makes any sense. Nevertheless, I would also recommend:
My first book in german was LOTR. the first two chapters were a real pain in the ass (coming and going from the book to the dictionary) but it has an easy to follow pace that makes it almost impossible to lose the track and it is one of those books that catches you. I literally started it thinking of reading only the first book and couldn’t stop till the end. As a downside, language wise, it has not a lot to offer apart from the ton of new words.
You are avoiding children’s books, but I’m prone to also recommend harry potter. It’s really well translated, it’s a no-end of new words and it slowly but steadily increases in complexity from the start to the end. Strangely enough, it posed me a bigger challenge than LOTR.
Thank you! I tried Steppenwolf some while ago but found it a bit tought. Will go for Siddhartha. I know Hesse is well praised and I am waiting to be at the level of German to read it as he wrote it.
Regarding translations: I bought a bilingual Animal Farm with one page english, one page german and when I first opened I thought what a brilliant idea to make a book like that! But then I quickly realized that the constant difference in sentence structure pains my brain. I think that is a major obstacle when it comes to translations (especiall ger/eng).
Also, thanks for this too - I don’t see Harry Potter as a children’s book. It cannot be I am that old no no no :)
Steppenwolf is imo a whole new level in difficulty. I think it’s partly because of the vocabulary, but mostly because of the genre. Everything changes so fast that it makes it really difficult to catch up if you relay too much on context. It is an awesome book. Note aside, as a spanish speaker, most of what i read is translated from other languages and reading Hesse and Mann in their original language made me realize how good “high literature” can actually be.
About HP, I had a pretty good experience re-reading it. The hardest part was having to catch up with the vocabulary (for some reason, “the prisoner of Azkaban” felt harder to read than LOTR), but once I was on track, I couldn’t stop and ended up reading from the third up to the end of the series.