Ich halte Blogstöckchen zwar für eine nervige Erfinderung, die bereits 2006 schon einen langen Bart hatte, aber wenn mich der Nerdcore-René um etwas bittet, kann ich natürlich nicht ablehnen. Die Mission: „Zähle 5 Bücher auf, die ganz oben auf deiner Wunschliste stehen, die aber KEINE Fortsetzungen von Büchern sind, die du schon gelesen hast – sie sollen also völlig neu für dich sein. Danach tagge 8 weitere Blogger und informiere diese darüber.“
Zum Welttag des Buches, der am 23. April gefeiert wird, bin ich natürlich wieder notorisch zu spät, aber besser spät als nie. Ich habe mich ebenfalls entschieden die Gesamtzahl auf zehn zu erhöhen, weil mehr ist in diesem Kontext ausnahmsweise mal wirklich besser und außerdem würde ich mich bei der Auswahl zu sehr quälen müssen. Here we go:
1. Robopocalypse von Daniel Wilson
Will ich seit Jahren lesen, spätestens nachdem Spielberg sich um die Adaption kümmern sollte. Das ist in den letzten Jahren ein wenig eingeschlafen, trotzdem will ich Robopocalypse demnächst unbedingt verschlingen, da es sich nach World War Z mit Robotern anhört. Weil ich Max Brooks’ Roman sehr liebe, dürfte mir das hier auch gefallen.
Two decades into the future humans are battling for their very survival when a powerful AI computer goes rogue, and all the machines on earth rebel against their human controllers. The machines believe that the planet would be better off without humans, and that robots would be better caretakers of the earth’s ecology. The robot war wages for five brutal years, but in the end humanity triumphs. Twenty minutes afer the war ends, Sergeant Cormac ‘Bright Boy’ Wallace is exterminating robots in the Alaskan wilderness when he finds a machine containing a an information cube – the robots’ black box on the entire war. Inside are thousands of accounts of humans designated ‘heroes’ by the machines; from children to soldiers – those who fought, and those who died. A few individual robots also rejected the super-AI’s homicidal campaign and join with human forces to save their collective freedom. Robopocalypse tells the story of humanity’s battle to survive, with fry cooks and ordinary citizens battling rogue smart cars and independent-minded kitchen appliances, while government scientists take on murderous supercomputers.
Amazon-Partnerlink: Robopocalypse (Robo 1)
2. The Man Who Heard Voices von Michael Bamberger
Ich bin ein riesiger Fan von M. Night Shyamalan, weshalb das für mich eigentlich Pflichtlektüre sein sollte.
Ten years ago, M. Night Shyamalan was on top of the world, touted as “the next Spielberg” by Newsweek and fresh off a string of successes including the Oscar-nominated smash The Sixth Sense, the Bruce Willis superhero origin story Unbreakable, and the alien thriller Signs, which would be Mel Gibson’s last studio hit. But things have changed: The filmmaker who could once open a movie on his moniker alone has a new film coming out today, the sci-fi story After Earth, where his name doesn’t appear in the key marketing materials at all. It’s only the latest setback for Shyamalan, whose career woes have been compounded by giddy press reports chronicling his fall from grace, including a memorable round of media attention in 2010 when audiences supposedly booed his title card in the trailer for the horror film Devil, which Shyamalan produced. Where did it all go wrong?
Amazon-Partnerlink: The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale by Bamberger, Michael published by Gotham Books (2006)
3. Freedom von Jonathan Franzen
Wenn man den Kritiken und Meinungen Glauben schenken darf, handelt es sich bei Franzens Freedom um den amerikanischen Roman des 21. Jahrhunderts, der Americana und Buchpolitik schmerzhaft anhand einer mittelständigen Familie kommentiert. Ich muss mich ja eigentlich bei meiner Biographie schämen, dass ich den Roman bisher nicht gelesen habe.
Head and shoulders above any other book this year: moving, funny and unexpectedly beautiful. I missed it when it was over’ Sam Mendes, Observer, Books of the Year ‘A cat’s cradle of family life, and if the measure of a good book is it’s afterburn, Freedom is a great book’ Kirsty Wark Observer, Books of the Year ‘I loved Freedom. His acute observations of emotional faultlines, his dialogue and above all his wry humour are delightful’ Antony Beevor Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year ‘Franzen pulls off the extraordinary feat of making the lives of his characters more real to you than your own’ David Hare, Guardian, Books of the Year ‘No question about it: Freedom swept everything before it in intricately observed, humane, unprejudiced armfuls. There was no novel to touch it in 2010.’ Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year ‘Undoubtedly a great novel about America. Rarely has the land of the free been scrutinised with such a sharp but loving eye’ Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year ‘It had me absolutely hooked’ Mark Watson, Observer, Books of the Year ‘By the end of Freedom you may feel you understand its protagonists better than you know anyone in the world around you’ Nicholas Hytner Evening Standard, Books of the Year ‘The novel of the year. Its portrait of a marriage, luminously and wittily drawn against a backdrop of modern America, is as good as literature gets
Amazon-Partnerlink: Freedom
4. The Stone Gods von Jeanette Winterson
Postapokalypse. Liebesgeschichte. Genau mein Ding. Außerdem sollte ich den Roman mal für ein Seminar lesen, dann fiel der Titel jedoch aus dem Syllabus und seither wartet er auf meiner Wunschliste auf die richtige Stimmung. Sie wird hoffentlich bald kommen.
The Stone Gods is one of Jeanette Winterson’s most imaginative novels — an interplanetary love story; a traveller’s tale; a hymn to the beauty of the world. On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet – pristine and habitable, like our own 65 million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. And off the air, Billie and Spike are falling in love. What will happen when their story combines with the world’s story, as they whirl towards Planet Blue, into the future? Will they – and we – ever find a safe landing place?
Amazon-Partnerlink: The Stone Gods
5. Why We Broke Up von Daniel Handler (Autor), Maira Kalman (Illustrator)
Süße Illustrationen und ein Titel, der doch schon alles beschreibt, was man wissen muss, um das Buch in die Hand zu nehmen und mit dem Lesen zu beginnen. Liegt bereits hier in physischer Form bei mir vor und wird wohl demnächst verschlungen.
I’m telling you why we broke up, Ed. I’m writing it in this letter, the whole truth of why it happened.
Min Green and Ed Slaterton are breaking up, so Min is writing Ed a letter and giving him a box. Inside the box is why they broke up. Two bottle caps, a movie ticket, a folded note, a box of matches, a protractor, books, a toy truck, a pair of ugly earrings, a comb from a motel room, and every other item collected over the course of a giddy, intimate, heartbreaking relationship. Item after item is illustrated and accounted for, and then the box, like a girlfriend, will be dumped.
Amazon-Partnerlink: Why We Broke Up
6. In the Country of Last Things von Paul Auster
Ich hatte fürs Abitur damals Paul Austers Moon Palace gelesen, für das ich über die Jahre danach eine große Affinität entwickelte. Daher würde ich gerne mal mehr von ihm lesen und der Titel hier klingt höchst interessant.
‘That is how it works in the City. Every time you think you know the answer to a question, you discover that the question makes no sense …’ This is the story of Anna Blume and her journey to find her lost brother, William, in the unnamed City. Like the City itself, however, it is a journey that is doomed, and so all that is left is Anna’s unwritten account of what happened. Paul Auster takes us to an unspecified and devastated world in which the self disappears amidst the horrors that surround us. But this is not just an imaginary, futuristic world – it is one that echoes our own, and in doing so addresses some of our darker legacies.
Amazon-Partnerlink: In the Country of Last Things
7. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth von Col. Chris Hadfield
Über Chris Hadfield habe ich hier im Blog bereits alles gesagt. Super Typ, das Buch dürfte ähnlich interessant sein, wie sein TEDTalk.
In An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Col. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement-and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counterintuitive lessons: don’t visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff.
Amazon-Partnerlink: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything
8. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character von Richard Feynman
Alles, was ich von Feynman in den letzten Jahren gehört habe, hat mich verzaubert, schlauer und reifer gemacht. Das Buch dürfte mir dabei weiter helfen.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was one of the world’s greatest theoretical physicists, but he was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure. An artist, safecracker, practical joker and storyteller, Feynman’s life was a series of combustible combinations made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism. Over a period of years, Feynman’s conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton were first taped and then set down as they appear here, little changed from their spoken form, giving a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age.
Amazon-Partnerlink: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character
9. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe von Charles Yu
Klingt nach abgefahrenem Space-Meta-Dingens und wie für mich geschrieben.
National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time.
Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life.
Amazon-Partnerlink: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel
10. What if the Moon didn’t exist / What if the Earth had Two Moons von Neil F. Comins
Hier cheate ich mal kurz und nenne zwei Titel, wobei der Autor ja gleichbleibt. Ich mag diese Gedankenexperimente.
A look at how life on Earth could be different if the moon did not exist analyzes how the location of the moon in relation to the Earth affects human animal, and plant life.
Amazon-Partnerlink: What If the Moon Didn’t Exist?: Voyages to Earths That Might Have Been
Amazon-Partnerlink: What If the Earth Had Two Moons?: And Nine Other Thought-Provoking Speculations on the Solar System
