The SPIEGEL literature newsletter asks whether books are becoming the next item on the to-do list. Culture writer Xaver von Cranach opens with a small observation that unsettles him: within a short time he sees two women reading books in the sauna. He has also noticed a woman reading on a treadmill at his gym and another pushing a stroller with a novel in hand. Cranach treats the sauna scene as a possible sign of how tightly leisure is organised: with wage work, care work and emotional work filling the day, the few hours people spend alone can feel like something that must be used well. Fifteen minutes in the sauna, he writes, might be enough for two chapters — but does that not turn reading into work?
His own test came through the jury for the SPIEGEL-Buchpreis, which is due to be awarded on 16 November. At the height of the jury work he had to read 20 novels in about eight weeks. He channelled his inner Rory Gilmore, carried at least one book and sometimes two, and read on the bus, on the subway, while waiting in the Kita cloakroom, on the playground and in supermarket queues. The reading was efficient and targeted, and he admits it was work. But he also found that life was better because he could escape into a book at any moment. Waiting, playing with his child, talking with his wife and even spending time with himself could feel like work too; reading seemed the smallest evil, a way to take a holiday from his own life, as Robert Musil put it in The Man Without Qualities. The newsletter promises further updates.
Elsewhere in the newsletter, Cranach notes that Colson Whitehead concludes his New York trilogy with Cool Machine. Cranach has read only Underground Railroad, the darker political novel about an underground tunnel system used by enslaved people to escape the southern states, but says Whitehead can also write very differently. His colleague Christian Buß met Whitehead in New York and walked the streets with him, giving a sense of what it means to live in the city as a writer with eyes and ears open.
The newsletter also includes a short interview with Timon Karl Kaleyta. Asked for the book of his life, he names Stendhal's Rot und Schwarz (The Red and the Black), saying it taught him early that most things in life can be extremely funny even when they are not meant to be. On his nightstand is Jochen Buchsteiner's Wir Ostpreußen, which he says he needs to 'work through'. He refuses the idea that any book is discussed too much, including the worst, and says all books are discussed too little. If all political talk shows and podcasts were replaced by book programmes discussing only Dark Romance and Romantasy, he suggests, everyone would be better off. His last WhatsApp message went to his new agent, a daily reminder not to be nasty to his beloved editor. Kaleyta's latest book is Heilung; his new novel, Gute Nacht, is due from Piper next February.
The quote section is devoted to Cleo Birdwell's Amazonen, a satirical novel first published in 1980 and billed as the intimate memoirs of the first woman in the National Hockey League. Cleo Birdwell was a pseudonym for the US author Don DeLillo. The book combines sex, camp and ice hockey; according to the newsletter, it has been dug out because hockey romance has become a successful genre among Gen Z, with series such as Heated Rivalry and Off Campus. A German edition is due on 17 November.
The newsletter closes with the current SPIEGEL bestseller lists. In fiction hardcover, Sebastian Fitzek's Der Nachtzug enters at No. 1, followed by Shida Bazyar's Die Lücken at No. 2 and Juli Zeh's Pony Show at No. 3. In nonfiction hardcover, Robert Habeck's Arctic Meltdown leads, ahead of Richard David Precht's Auserzählt? and Matthias Brandt's Nein sagen.
Sources: Der Spiegel.