Florian Hollender | floho.com

leisures books to-do list, originally uploaded by floho.

I was thinking about writing a nice little piece on motivation, on the small and big things in life that you don’t really pay attention to until you almost fall over them because they become milestones, stepstones or road blocks all of a sudden. I discarded that idea – about half a minute ago. Instead, today I’ll give you a glimpse at my literary To-Do lists. There are two – one with “leisure” books, one with “business” books. Please understand that both terms are applied in a very broad sense. Still, they are on two different bookshelves, hence they get separate mentions. As both lines are quite long, I’ll deal with them in a single post each.

The leisure books (left to right):

• “Das Streiflichtbuch”: Collected columns of the S?ºddeutsche Zeitung (German newspaper). Got that as a gift when I finished my civil service in 2003.
• “Das Rätsel der Menschwerdung” (Josef H. Reichhoff): A book about the genesis of the human race in relation to nature. A gift from a very important friend of the family, he sent it to me in 1999. It was a bit much for me at that time, but I’m looking forward to it now.
• “Wie zerstört man eine Demokratie” (Naomi Wolf): How to destroy a democracy. A friend of mine thought that I need that book and gave it to me last year, be it only for the title, or in case I changed careers
• “Warum und wohin” (Harald Schmidt): Columns of Harald Schmidt, one of the people who shaped the German TV landscape and copied the likes of Letterman etc. for the first time here.
• “The Gum Thief” (Douglas Coupland): I liked his “Microserfs” to death, but I can’t get to grips with this one, it is just too meta for me. Still, I’ll try to bite through.
• “The Rules of The Game” (Neil Strauss): Fun book that allegedly teaches a man how to charm the ladies of the world. Bought it after I had enjoyed his original book, “The Game”, but quickly realized that I’m not really willing to change how I interact with women based on that book, not even for a trial period. Don’t know why it is still on the reading list after all – maybe for desperate times?
• “Wien”: A travel guide to Vienna. Must be sorted into the travel book section.
• “The Bounce Back Book” (Karen Salmansohn): Got it in a bad time, and apparently my life got better before I finished it. Maybe just keep it there for the time when I start reading that Neil Strauss book and utterly fail…
• “Der seltsame Fall des Benjamin Button” (F. Scott Fitzgerald): The curious case of Benjamin Button – interesting how they made quite a long movie out of quite a small novel!
• “Todesspiel” (Jon Sandford):A hacker dies, data gets in wrong hands, thriller ensues.
• “The Ridiculous Race” (Steve Hely & Vali Chandrasekaran): Stole it from my sister. Hilarious read.
• “The Bro Code” (Barney Stinson): If I have to explain to you why this is legen-wait for it!-dary, then you have to get to know me better. Really. I mean – really really.
• “Smorebrod in Napoli” (Sebastian Schnoy): It says “an enjoyable stroll through Europe”. He’s a comedian. I have no clue how that will turn out…
• “Die Täuschung” (Caleb Carr): I loved the first 2 thirds of it, then it drags a bit. About something like the league of extraordinary gentlemen, but in a different setting, with different personas. You know?!
• “Skal, Admiral von Schneider!”: Scandinavian stories about christmas, drinking, and drinking at christmas. (Yeah, I bought this last christmas season. So what?)
• “Fatal Error” (Michael Ridpath): Start Up, hackers, deadly revelations.
• “The No Plot? No Problem! Novel-writing kit” (Chris Baty): I’ll use this in November, when I try to write the rough first draft of my first novel in 30 days, jumping on the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) bandwagon.
• “Yes, i bounce!” an advertising booklet from California Sunbounce. Needs to be trashed.
• “The Art of War” (Sun Tzu): An original with “psychological comments”. Well, this is gonna be interesting. Or mightily boring…
• “I love you!” A small book, actually a “gift” by Thalia bookstore I got a while back. It has an ad on the back of the cover, so it is very unuseable, even if the content was good, which it is not really. So it’ll stay there, as I can’t throw away books, and this is close enough to a real book to trigger my instincts.
• “Alles” (Herberg Grönemeyer): A Songbook with most of Grönemeyer’s songs. From the two weeks last year where I thought I’d pick up and improve my guitar game. Which I… didn’t really.
• “1000 Tipps für die Gitarre” (Mike Eulner, Jacky Dreksler): See above.
• “Mavericks at work” (William C. Taylor, Polly Labarre): Great book, but it belongs in the “business” section. Also, I finished it, so it doesn’t belong in the To-Do section there, either.
• “Eternal” (Craig Russell): Crime, set up in Hamburg, following a very nicely done first one. It is still very irritating to read all the German inbetween the English text, but still I refuse to buy books in German when they were written in English wherever I can. Bites me big time in this case.
• “Traffic” (Tom Vanderbilt): Everything you ever wanted to know about traffic. If you are, like me, someone who actually gives a damn. I can fully subscribe to the slogan on the cover: “Will appeal to fans of Top Gear and readers of Blink and Freakonomics”. (I bought this, really, because all three things apply to me, and I was not disappointed!)
• “Zweierlei Glück” (Bert Hellinger): Hellinger invented his own kind of psychotherapy, which I find appaling and interesting at the same time, so I try to get some more background info on him and his work.

In case you wonder about the drawing: It was a gift from a very good friend of mine to my mother many years back. She had it in her bedroom, so since I inherited it, I keep it in my bedroom for good luck.