One of my favorite things about Germany is the fact the bookstores are everywhere and books are fairly cheap (about $12 for a trade paperback and about $16 for a new hardcover, regardless of size) - Germany is the world's 2nd largest book market after the United States, and they end up translating pretty much everything - so much so that if you're looking for a book written in language other than English, you're more likely to find it in German than English. Given my tendencies toward bibliophilia, this is both a blessing and a curse. In case you happen to be interested, I thought I'd share the two that I'm currently reading.
Städte der Welt (Cities of the World)
Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg
I received this book as a Christmas present from my parents, and it's absolutely gorgeous - a full color reprint of an atlas dating from 1572 - 1617 showing the major cities of Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. The views of the cities are remarkable, as the artists managed to draw accurate maps of the cities from a bird's eye view and from steep angles, all before (obviously) the invention of planes or satellites. The introduction describes it as an early Google Earth, which is fairly close to the truth - before this atlas there was no real way for anyone to get an idea of what a city even looked like without personally visiting. There were other atlases of course, but these tended to use one drawing to represent up to 8 different cities.
The atlas is also surprisingly modern in its tone - the author, Georg Braun, invites readers to submit engravings of their home cities with a short description for incorporation into the next edition, sort a very proto-Wikipedia. The author's predilection for the enjoyment of beverages pops up with amusing frequency - every 3rd city or so is praised for the quality of their beer or wine, and some are even crtiquied for charging too much! More important from a historical perspective is the date of the last edition. In 1618 the Thirty Years War broke out, destroying many of the cities presented in the atlas, and leaving the atlas as our only clue to what the medieval quarter of some cities were like.
Since the atlas is so huge, I've only been able to read 2-3 pages a day - the detail is amazing and it would be a shame to rush through it. Some of the maps fold out of the book to approx. 2' x 3', so you can spend a goodly amount of time poring over it. In short, if you find yourself with some free cash and like the old stuff, consider picking the book up.
Die Vermessung der Welt (Measuring the World)
Daniel Kehlmann
I picked this book up on a whim, as met my two criteria - it was cheap and looked interesting. The blurb on the back described it as an imaginative retelling of the lives of the scientists Carl Friedrich Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt. I had finished The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson over the summer, (which I highly reccommend) which dealt with the political, social, and scientific changes that happened during the Enlightenment, with some piracy and treasure hunting thrown in for good measure, so I thought that Kehlmann's novel would continue in the same vein. However, it was also a German novel, so the possibility of being crushed under the weight of history, tradition, and guilt was also fairly high.
In short, I'm amazed by this book - it's a wonderful combination of irony, magic realism, philosophy, and continues the wonderful tradition of Germans mocking themselves and their country (see anything written by Heine). The characters are quirky, empathetic (they constantly complain that, in the future "Any old idiot can make up all sorts of nonsense about us") and help to paint a living picture of science in the early 19th Century (Kehlmann makes this all more exciting than I can ever hope to). Measuring the World has been a refreshing break from the more traditional German literature, and accomplishes what almost no German literary work has done since 1945 - it completely avoids any mention of World War II!
Again, if you get a chance, pick up this book. It's fairly short and the style lends itself to long reading sessions, so it should be a quick(ish) read. In addition, you'll get to experience what could hopefully be the start of a new German literary movement, one that still looks to the past, but for a new sort of inspiration.
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