Book Smash Berlin Blues by Sven Regener
January 2025 Book Smash
Our featured novel for Book Smash January 2025 is Berlin Blues by Sven Regener.
We get to time travel to 1980s West Berlin with this cool narrative and I’m excited to read it with you. Our zoom meeting is January 25 at 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern.
To recap last month’s book, A Time of the Assassins by Henry Miller, we had a lively discussion.
Jon summed up the experience of reading Henry Miller’s study of Rimbaud perfectly. He said it was like going into a bar and a guy tells you about a great new band that he loves, but, then he doesn’t stop telling you and keeps going on and on about it while you feel trapped in the conversation.
That was the general consensus and Jon couldn’t’ve been more spot on.
As a Henry Miller fan and recent re-reader of Tropic of Cancer, which held up surprisingly well since I read it in my 20s, I felt more motivated by A Time of the Assassins, but, I’m not going to recommend it as a book even for Henry Miller fans to jump into. Don’t get me wrong, I adore diving a little more into Henry Miller’s brain and the snippets of process that came through. There was also some amazing comments on how humanity never really changes through the decades that truly apply to us here in 2025. I’d recommend The Air-Conditioned Nightmare if you’re interested in more such observations that also seem to speak to us right here in 2025.
Another problem is last month’s book wasn’t a novel, so, I’ve learned my lesson and we’ll keep it to novels.
I’m really excited to dig into Berlin Blues. I’m fascinated with West Berlin of the 1980s, especially as a fan of Wim Wenders, Nick Cave, Einsturzende Neubauten, and so much else that was bubbling there in those years. Also, one of my favorite books from last year was Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, where she brought us on the East side of the Berlin wall in the 1980s and created a spectacular love story in that setting.
Sevenger’s Berlin Blues takes us to 1989, right before the wall is about to come down. Sevenger is also a musician, check out his band:
Feel free to comment through the month on your progress, what’s working for you, what’s not working for you. Also, the book is 250 pages, so, plan to pace yourself at 10 pages a day if you want to read it daily. If you don’t finish the novel you’re still invited to the discussion, though we may have some spoilers for you. :)
For paying subscribers our zoom meeting is on January 25 and I’ll send you the link. I look forward to not only talking the book, but how it relates to ourselves personally, what it says about the human condition, did we dig it, how are we doing as writers, as readers, and how are we coping with our human condition.
That sounds like we’re too intellectual, so for those of you who want to join us for the first time it’s about the passion, intellect bores us, let’s have fun with the material and connecting on our observations.
If you have suggestions for future Book Smash months let me know.
Free free to message me with any questions.
Thanks,
Tony