State of the Union – late October 2012

Status update

It’s another grey day here in Vaterstetten but I had a breakthrough yesterday: I put up the first ceiling lamp replacing the bare bulbs hanging from the wall. It looks good but it took me three month. Some call it procrastination … I call it skill.

Here is what it looks like outside …

Want to know what I read currently?

A nice guy I was sitting next to in a plane recently recommended Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther stories to me. So, I took five minutes to find out which is the first which isn’t my normal style. I usually start with the latest and work my way back. This time I started with #1 “March Violets” which might me also the last Bernie Gunther story I’ll ever read. Why? Don’t look at me with these question marks in your eyes.

I think Philip Kerr is scottish and yep, they do have a weird accent which by the way I really like to listen to especially when a scott tells a joke. I always laugh before the end of the joke. Anyway, the question was why I don’t like Bernie Gunther.

Bernie is a private detective in Berlin during the Third Reich and I think the observation about the general mood in the German society is quite good and subtle. I quite enjoy crime novels as a mirror of society like my favorites Ken Bruen, Xialong Qiu and Lee Child since I can’t do Peter Handke with an empty stomach.

Another anyway, or maybe a “but” … Reading the book is like reading it with a German accent. I’m not sure if it is just me but it’s written like a German with a heavy accent would speak English and that annoys me. I partially hear me, I hear my German co-workers in meetings and I don’t need that when reading a couple of pages at night.

I give you an example: Kerr calles the police throughout the book “bulls” which is the direct translation of the German slang “Bulle”. Yet, I have never heard a native english speaker use that word. It just sounds wrong and I can’t get used to it.

It might take me a long time to finish it since I still want to know who the killer is.

Check it out here: Philip Kerr “March Violets”