Every week I read one Little Black Classic and this week's is Nietzsche supposedly self-mocking autobiography.

I can be quick. To me, I found it less self-mocking and more like a man who is rather full of himself. Sure, he is exaggerating and it shows, but with this kind of snub undertones that go on to make it painfully clear he actually beliefs he is that clever.

Either that, or I just didn't understand a thing of what he was trying to say. Anyways, not an entertaining read.

~ Little Black Classics #102 ~

By and large, I think it's fairest to say "I didn't mind" the books we read in school. 

A few stood out as instant favorites: Shakespeare's Macbeth which, together with Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet movie (which we watched in class) laid the groundwork for my lifelong love of Shakespeare; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese (which the rest of my class hated, but I instantly loved).

Some that I found OK without being enthusiastic about them still inspired me to take a closer look at their authors and discover works that I ended up liking much better -- e.g. Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers and Intrigue and Love (aka Passion and Politics), which eventually led me to his Don Carlos, which in turn became an instant favorite.

Some I rather disliked in school (at least in part, because of the way in which they were presented in class), but I reread them years later and they suddenly made a whole lot more sense -- such as John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Albert Camus's The Stranger (though I still liked The Plague, which we never read in school, better), Max Frisch's Homo Faber and The Firebugs; and, perhaps most surprisingly, Thomas Mann's Mario and the Magician (surprising because Mann was already a favorite author of mine at the time, so this should have been a no-brainer favorite from the start).

There were only a few books that I positively hated in school, but those I hated with enough of a vengeance never to have looked at them again -- or at anything else written by their authors: Peter Handke's Kaspar and Alfred Andersch's Sansibar.

Far and away the biggest impact on my reading preferences, though, was wielded by my final English teacher, who not only taught that Shakespeare class mentioned above and introduced me to sonnets (EBB, Shakespeare and otherwise), but who also gave me a copy of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park as a gift ... and thus inspired yet another one of my most lasting instances of book fandom -- because come on, if you fall in love with Austen's writing when reading Mansfield Park, everything else is just bound to fall into place completely naturally.

(Task: Did you love or hate the books you had to read for school?  Looking back, which ones (good or bad) stand out to you the most?)

I'm going to split up my submissions for the crowdsourced history reading list initiated by Chris into several topical lists (with cross references), beginning with the authors and book series I'm submitting in toto, as well as some basic reference material.  So:

ALL BOOKS BY ...
* Antonia Fraser (women's history, Tudors & Stuarts)
* Ian Mortimer (British history, particularly Middle Ages)
* Dan Jones (ditto)
* Stanley Wells (Shakespeare -- everything from biographies and history to criticism)
* John Julius Norwich (British and Mediterranean history)

* Christopher Hibbert (ditto)
* Jared Diamond (intersection of (world) history, geography, and sociology)

SERIES
* Will Durant, Ariel Durant: The Story of Civilization (11 volumes, Ancient Orient to Age of Napoleon)

* Various Authors: Fischer Weltgeschichte (published elsewhere as Weidenfeld & Nicolson Universal History / Siglo XXI Editores Historia Universal / Storia Universale Feltrinelli, and Bordas / Fayard Histoire Universelle, respectively) (36 vols., prehistory to present day)

BASIC REFERENCE
* Oxford Encyclopedia of World History
* Putzger Atlas der Weltgeschichte (unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge not translated into English -- but for my money, one of the best historical cartographical works in existence)

Ich bin Single, Kalimera (Herbert 1) - F...

Herbert ist Mitte dreißig, Spießer, Bayer und Single. Durch seinen Humor und sein Selbstbewusstsein schafft er es den Sommerurlaub im Süden alleine anzutreten. Doch das ist nicht immer ganz einfach, sein Zimmer ist nicht frei, die hübscheste am Pool hat einen Freund und das mit der simplen Entspannung ist nicht so einfach, aber Herbert weiß sich zu helfen. Wird er den Urlaub als Single beenden?

Das Cover passt sehr gut zu den anderen Büchern aus der Herbert Reihe. Nebeneinander sehen die bestimmt super aus. Es ist zwar schlicht, aber die Farbe ist ein Hingucker.

Ich habe schon mehrere Bücher von Kalpenstein gelesen und mir gefiel sein Stil immer sehr gut. In diesem Buch merkt man, dass es zu seinen Anfängen gehört. Das meine ich nicht böse ganz im Gegenteil, ich mag es, wenn Autoren wachsen und sich weiter entwickeln.
Auch in diesem Buch gab es viel zu Lachen. Herbert ist ein Unikat. Er ist unglaublich von sich eingenommen, da ist es auch nicht schlimm, wenn nicht alles nach Plan läuft.

Herbert beschreibt seinen Urlaub ohne Schnörkel, geht auch nicht immer nett mit den anderen Gästen des Hotels um.
Es werden auch einige Klischees bedient, ob das nun der deutsche oder der englische Gast ist. Häufig dachte ich "Typisch deutsch" und musste schmunzeln, weil mir das alles so bekannt vorkam. Am besten fand ich es, dass er auf Rhodos war, denn da hatte ich letztes Jahr Urlaub gemacht und hab vieles wieder entdeckt.

"Ich bin Single, Kalimera" ist eine unterhaltsame Lektüre, welche man eigentlich nicht aus der Hand legen möchte.
Freue mich schon auf Band zwei.

Leseempfehlung.

Ich habe das Buch vom Autoren bereitgestellt bekommen und bedanke mich herzlich dafür.