my bookshelf

i looove reading!! but there are like 3 books on my shelf that i haven't read yet so please give me recommendations, especially for comics/graphic novels bc i have some catching up to do!

disclaimer that my reviews (reports?) are not strictly spoiler-free. star⭐-rating is at the end of each entry. you have been disclaimed.

★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶

books i've read in 2026:

10/04/2026    The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

a man will do one sort of kind of selfless act and think that absolves him of a lifetime of egotistical sin. it doesn't. knife to the chest 🗡🗡🗡 but oh, i liked The Picture of Dorian Gray. i did nawt understand big chunks of it for lack of cultural and political knowledge because i am not a rich boy in 1890s england but i got the gist of it. something i always like about the classics (tm) is the big ideas. back when authors were philosophers and a book had to concern itself with society and the nature of man. i'm not saying that needs to be every novel ever, i'm just saying i like when an author gives you a little something to think about. which i think my close personal friend and pioneer of gay male misogyny Oscar Wilde did here. the character of Lord Henry (whose full name i never quite caught. why do they call him harry? is it lord harry henry wotton? why would you do that to a reader?) is a prime source of saying stuff for you to think about. he is incredibly annoying to me because in everything he says he feels so very insincere and pretentious, it feels like he just says stuff just to say stuff and provoke, but it works. you read what lord henry says and it brushes up against you and you start thinking about whether you agree or not. very effective. king of sophisticated rage-bait. a little bit of philosophy that i did genuinely like is what Basil says right at the beginning, when he talks about his art and Dorian Gray. about how as an artist, your art doesn't reveal so much about the thing you depict as about yourself and your relationship to it and the context of the work's creation. this may not be true for everyone, but i felt that. making art is just baring your soul to the world. and when i draw a portrait of my best friend with whom i have a strange homoerotic, queerplatonic thing going on, it says way less about them than it does about how i percieve them. and that's sometimes a scary thing to reveal to the world. anyway. Oscar Wilde did not need to include those endless passages detailing every one of Dorian Gray's special interests and collections. you're just showing off now. i read that chapter like you watch TV waiting for the program you actually wanna see. three stars. maybe ⭐⭐⭐1/2

13/03/2026    Alpha Boys by Aurel Mertz

this one was interesting in a few different ways. the uh, feminist-theoretical aspects of it are quite basic and (to me) obvious. nothing a trans faggot like me wouldn't already know. and i'm not unfamiliar with the manosphere either (unfortunately, i might say), so reading about all these phenomena of pickup-artists, "coaches", incels, the andrew tates and whatever whatever of this world, didn't come with shock as much as a resigned well, yes. what shocked me a bit were the experiences Mertz recounts about average, every-day male spaces, about the average cis-male socialisation, that often left me like girl, you live like this?? cause that's crazy. and crazier even that even a relative softie (which is how he comes across online at least) like Mertz, who says about himself that he grew up around strong women and soft men, and who is politically decidedly left-leaning, does still seem to connect to and fall into a version of this kind of "toxic masculinity" that i always feel like you surely have to be the kind of guy i'd be scared of walking past to entertain. but i think it's very valuable to have this kind of reflected self-examination of a cishet masculinity and an examination of (toxic) masculinity from a cishet male perspective (ok this sounds bad, hear me out) because while, as i said, its theoretical content isn't revoluntionary and isn't anything that other (non cishet male) authors haven't already described and described much more in depth, i think it's a good entrypoint for men to start reflecting on their own relationship with masculinity. specifically because it's written by a fellow guy. i'm not saying that an andrew tate will pick it up and come out the other side a changed man, there are plenty of signifiers of the book's satirically-confrontational intent, both on the cover (an adorable baby kitten??) and in its language, that would deter someone who's that far gone. but, you know. your average guy who is just a little too close to the verge of falling for the manosphere propaganda. and ultimately, while maintaining the satirical, critical edge, Alpha Boys is very empathetically and respectfully written, not just towards the obvious victims of "toxic masculinity", but also towards the men who grow up on it, internalise and externalise it without necessarily wanting to do harm, but rather just because they don't know what else to do. because unlearning destructive behaviours and thought patterns and emotions is hard. or whatever. idk, it was a good read. biggest thing i took from it was that i am so happy that i'm trans. came with its own issues but at least i don't have to unlearn all that. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

21/02/2026    Conni, Dina und der Babysitterclub by Dagmar Hoßfeld

another one of these! and once again it was sooo cute and fun! i liked how naturally it was decided that of course Dina's friends are gonna help with taking care of her sibling. it takes a village, and all that. and i loved how confidently and proactively Paul joins in taking care of the baby -- though you coul've probably gone more into depth, it at least starts a conversation about gender-inequality in child-care and that babies aren't purely a girl-thing. while reading i thought i maybe would've liked more of a conversation about what if you don't want a baby and more diverse opinions on that? but maybe this isn't the place for that, because i guess the reader as well as character-perspective is more about being/becoming siblings to a baby rather than becoming a parent.

something i was irritated by was the timeline of this one. cause this book spans the better part of a pregnancy, from "we're telling our child she'll be a sister" to birth, which is what? like 5-6 months? and yet, nothing (other than the babysitter-preparations) happens, there are no birthdays, no changes of season, no holidays or school breaks, and time is counted in weeks rather than months. this is crazy to me and makes no sense. i guess time in the conni universe functions weird generally, because there is a chronology but there is also only so much time until Conni and her friends get older, so you have to cram all the stories you wanna tell into a relatively short few years. the things these kids experience just in 6th and 7th grade....but usually, stories take up maybe a few weeks or couple of months in-universe, so this pregnancy thing is just...tricky. it seems to just be a very very long march. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

18/02/2026    Rocky Beach by Christopher Tauber & Hanna Wenzel

i'm not as big into Die Drei ???/The Three Investivators as others are. i had a couple of cassettes as a kid and i can appreciate the series (franchise?) but they weren't part of my childhood to such an extend that i have crazy nostalgia about them. Rocky Beach is a kind of fan-fictional look at the three boys all grown-up, each having gone his own way out into the world, brought back together by pure coincidence to once again work (somewhat) together as detectives. the comic -- unlike the original series -- is dark, gritty and bluntly adult, but the story does still follow some of the narrative structures i remember from the originals. i liked it, the story, overall. i think that maybe comic is a tricky medium to tell crime stories in, because it is by nature so fast-paced and (to me at least) crime needs suspense and suspense needs buildup and buildup needs time. so it was kind of over before i could really get invested. but maybe i need to read slower, too. generally, i thought there were some issues with pacing and scene/action transitions -- i occasionally got irritated when scenes changed suddenly and maybe a couple extra panels could've helped there to better communicate these transitions. and sometimes, i felt that speech bubbles could've been better arranged to allow for clearer legibility. the art is absolutely gorgeous (despite some poses or others that maybe weren't technically wrong, but i still felt were...kind of stiff. in an uncanny way.) and i really liked all the characterisations. i think as a whole, Rocky Beach is probably more exciting for genuine The Three Investigators fans, but it works well enough as a stand-alone too. there is enough backstory in there to understand the characters' history with one-another and the town. ⭐⭐⭐

 

17/02/2026    Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers

wowie!! i've been excited for this one ever since i got wind of it (probably via a screenshotted tumblr post i saw on pinterest) and now it's finally out and it's sooo good!! you go into it thinking you know the story. enemies to lovers, medieval-ish fantasy setting, high stakes strengthening and breaking character-relationships, ok. a fun, breezy read. and it is a fun, breezy read, and you're kicking your feet in glee and you're snorting at the humour that is so very stupid but delivered in a way that you can't even get upset at how stupid it is, and then the lore unfolds around you and you're shouting at the pages in mind-boggled disbelief. and then it keeps going! and things keep happening and the world keeps expanding and the characters keep becoming more and more three-dimensional and you're thinking how crazy it is that a single person can come up with all this stuff. the wonders of the human mind, right? so yeah. Sir Cameron never gets boring and the longer you read, the fresher and more inventive it feels. and all the characters are (often unlikable) freaks, each in their own ways, and yet. and yet, you love them so much. cameron is so stupid but you love him and merulo is so nasty but you love him and glenda is so horrible but you love her and...well, i've got nothing against the dragon ladies. a big strong woman can do whatever she wants. but you love them.

the aforementioned humour. this made me laugh.

anyway. needless to say, i had a fantastic time with this and it was well worth the wait. i hope they get to make part 2!! also, the book is just so gorgeous. waugh. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

04/02/2026    Conni, das Kleeblatt und die Pferde am Meer by Dagmar Hoßfeld

if you know me you know what i'm gonna say. i loveeed this so much wow. my close personal friend conni klawitter <3 i didn't quite know what to expect with this one, on the surface it seemed like a kind of fun breather where not much happens -- what kind of plot can they squeeze into six days in-universe time that will fill 173 pages? but wowie! conni keeps experiencing things! i was never really a horsegirl, so i guess i learned a lot about them in reading this (learned may be a stretch. read words that i didn't know before is more like it. dunno that i will commit them to memory). i thought the animal abuse subplot was really well done. for one, i teared up reading how this woman was treating her horsies. but i also liked the balance kept between conni & her friends taking action on their own but also being responsible enough to reflect on legality and safety, and understanding just when it's time to let adults in on the issue and take charge. it's not a Conni (or even her friendgroup) is the sole hero story and that's something i've always liked about the conni series. she's just a girl. and she isn't powerless but there are things where you have to trust the adults around you to take care of it. and i liked how here especially, this emotional conflict is shown between wanting to do something, being scared of doing something illegal, wanting to tell an adult you trust but worrying they won't take it seriously (if you don't have sufficient evidence), and then being relieved to have told them but restless because now there's nothing more you can do. i love it when middle grade books let their characters experience complex emotions. handheart ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

29/01/2026    Testament by J. Marshall Smith

it's kind of crazy and sad how quickly you can read a comic. i read Testament in its entirety on the trainride to uni this morning. it's gorgeous and really good but i wished i'd had taken longer to get through it. i was barely really invested when it was already over. still, i was quite sad. i felt like you could probably have done a more thorough exploration of the themes and questions that the story raises, but i like it as this sort of starting point or nudge to think about them yourself too. i need to reread, i think. i'm so used to reading prose, i tend to skip over the visuals, even when i read comics, and it would be such a shame not to appreciate Smith's gorgeous art. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

26/01/2026    Kein Winter für Wölfe by Kurt Lütgen (1955)

i found this book sitting in a tiny library on my way to a job interview last fall and thought it sounded interesting, so i took it home. it feels like reading it took forever. things keep happening in there and it's not necessarily written in a super engaging, thrilling way (at least for my mushy 21st century brain), and also everyone keeps saying things that are so racist. alas. the 1950s. apparently this thang won the german youth literature award (deutscher jugendbuchpreis) in 1956, which is crazy to me because there are zero youths in this. anyway. i didn't hate it, literarily, i really quite warmed up to the characters and story by the end (which is very on theme here, what with winter coming to an end in it, and the characters also warming up to one-another), and i have to admit, the ending moved me. i shed a tear. still, ⭐⭐1/2 for being just kind of a boring reading experience to me personally.

★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶★⭑✴✦✸⋆🟊⭒✶

all the books i read in 2025:

23/01/2025    Der Hund, der unterwegs zu einem Stern war by Henning Mankell
31/01/2025    Maus by Art Spiegelman
15/02/2025    You'd Be Paranoid Too If Everyone Was Out To Get You by Awsten Knight
26/02/2025    Man Vergisst Nicht Wie Man Schwimmt by Christian Huber
04/03/2025    Nullerjahre by Hendrik Bolz
08/03/2025    Conni, Anna und das wilde Schulfest by Dagmar Hoßfeld
11/03/2025    Conni, Billi und die Mädchenbande by Dagmar Hoßfeld
21/04/2025    Eine Hand Voller Sterne by Rafik Schami
09/05/2025    The Dead Travel Fast by Eric Nuzum
14/05/2025    Conni, Mandy und das große Wiedersehen by Dagmar Hoßfeld
06/06/2025    Mama, Bitte Lern Deutsch by Tahsim Durgun
19/06/2025    Conni, Phillip und das Supermädchen by Dagmar Hoßfeld
02/09/2025    Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
10/10/2025    Der Kleine Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
30/10/2025    Conni, Paul und die Sache mit der Freundschaft by Dagmar Hoßfeld
15/11/2025    The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
22/11/2025    Conni, Phillip und ein Kuss im Schnee by Dagmar Hoßfeld
27/11/2025    Mein Urlaub mit Miesi by Manfred Töpel
11/12/2025    Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
27/12/2025    Conni, Dina und das Liebesquiz by Dagmar Hoßfeld