Listed in the order I read them. Some are in German, some in English, but you should be able to find translations for most of them. No tech book made the list this year (I didn’t finish any).
I enjoyed quite a few comics and graphic novels this year. Daytripper is a masterpiece, and Pascal Jousselin’s Unschlagbar series (Imbattable in French and Invincible in English) is super funny and creative.
Another theme: coming-of-age stories set in the 1990s in post-reunification East Germany (Oder Florida and Als ich mit Hitler Schnapskirschen aß. Lukas Rietzschel’s Mit der Faust in die Welt schlagen from last year’s list also belongs to this theme.)
I just finished Dalia Grinkevičiūtė’s account of her 1941 deportation as a 14-year-old from Lithuania to a Siberian labor camp and found it extremely moving (English: Shadows on the Tundra). Highly recommended.
Heinrich Heine, Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (1844)
Dave Addey, Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies (2018)
Pénélope Bagieu, Unerschrocken – Fünfzehn Porträts außergewöhnlicher Frauen (2016)
Marc-Uwe Kling, QualityLand (2017)
Charlie Kelly, Fat Tire Flyer: The True Story of Repack and the Invention of the Mountain Bike (2014)
Max Czollek, Desintegriert euch! (2018)
Bettina Hartz, Auf dem Rad: Eine Frage der Haltung (2012)
Emma, The Mental Load: A Feminist Comic (2017)
Mike Monteiro, Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It (2019)
Michelle Obama, Becoming (2018)
Christian Bangel, Oder Florida (2017)
Pascal Jousselin, Unschlagbar 1 – Gerechtigkeit und frisches Gemüse (2017)
Pascal Jousselin, Unschlagbar 2 – Mein Nachbar, der Superheld (2018)
Manja Präkels, Als ich mit Hitler Schnapskirschen aß (2017)
Thomas Pletzinger, The Great Nowitzki (2019)
Emily Chappell, Where There's a Will: Hope, Grief and Endurance in a Cycle Race Across a Continent (2019)
David Nelles & Christian Serrer, Kleine Gase – Große Wirkung: Der Klimawandel (2018)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Der kleine Prinz (1943)
Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá, Daytripper (2011)
Dalia Grinkevičiūtė, Aber der Himmel – grandios (1997)