I started reading in German a couple of years ago, and with each book it gets easier. You acquire vocabulary of course, but once I had one or two novels under my belt I felt more relaxed, confident and better able to properly lose myself in the fiction.
As mentioned before, if you are beginner-intermediate, you can totally start with translations of your favourite children’s books – I started with Lemony Snicket and Harry Potter about a year before I began with adult fiction.
Here are three modern books I loved and can recommend – they have a lot of dialogue, which makes them much easier to follow:
Tschick, Wolfgang Herrndorf
This is a kids/YA book which is also a movie so a really great place for a B1-B2 learner to start. Two outcast tweens take an impromptu road trip at the start of the summer vacation: Maik, who has an unhappy home life, and the mysterious Russian kid known as ‘Tschick’.
Und dann steht einer auf und öffnet das Fenster, Susann Pasztor
Fred, a single dad with a troubled 13 year old son, has trained as a volunteer companion to the dying and finds a challenge in his first assignment – the inscrutable Karla. When Fred manages to torpedo a tenuous friendship with Karla, son Phil provides a link between these three lonely souls. Odd couple tearjerkers, anyone?
Wende, Eva Ladipo
A political thriller from a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung journalist. The protagonist, René, has a successful career in the nuclear power sector until public opinion ruins the company. On top of that, one of his colleagues commits suicide. René, who comes from a poor family in East Germany, grabs a new opportunity from a mysterious older woman, Anna, and finds himself leaving Frankfurt for a swish job in London. What kind of secrets does Anna have in her past? And was it really suicide?
Just saw your blog and love the concept! We’re sort of opposites – I’ve reached a good level of fluency in Spanish and am going for my C1 and would like to start learning German. Do you have any recommendations for starting out?
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Ooh well you can do the absolute beginner stuff with Duolingo to start getting an idea of German – for audio practice, the Coffee Break German podcast is super lovely and starts right from the beginning. See also “Super Easy German” on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk1fjOl39-53GxQIn1Hxdouokf0J0SDpl
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Cool, thanks so much! I’ll check them out
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I love Tschick! The book is more interesting imo but the movie isn’t bad either. Would love to read something close to this novel in style.
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Thanks for your comment! If you want another misunderstood teen book, Ellbogen from Fatma Aydemir is good – it’s much darker though
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I’ll see if I can find it here.
In general, I try to read something more lustig, i.e. I have “Er ist wieder da” on my list at the moment.
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I have avoided comedic books in German just cuz comedy doesn’t always translate to another culture 😉 But I am a fan of stand up and the Swiss comedian Hazel Brugger is p funny, very dry.
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