Books

Everybody is complaining about the fact that people are not reading, especially young people, especially books, nobody is reading anymore.
But this is just not true. At least not in the S-Bahn. This morning a man was sitting in front of me and he was reading a book. And I realized that there were more people reading. Reading books. More people reading books than playing on their phones. I was curious to see what kind of books . I twisted myself in all directions just to get a quick look. Next surprise: these weren’t just trash like the kind you would buy at the gas station. Not the 50 shades of grey stuff. The guy in front of me for example read Äußerungen by Wolfgang Mattheuer, a german painter and sculptor from the 1940s. One of the main figures of the Leipziger Schule. To my right I detected Blutsbrüder by Ernst Haffner. A novel from the 1930s in Berlin––about thousands of young people living in the street because of the economic situation. Only old books with yellowed covers. Is this a new nostalgia?