My favorite books 2019

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.