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Lesen macht Spaß! According to the linguist Stephen Krashen, one of the most effective ways for you to gain proficiency and confidence in a language is through "comprehensible input" in a low-stress environment: Reading for pleasure is the #1 element on that list. To help you with that, we have an ever-growing set of authentic German books at the beginning level (children's books and readers) in the GELL Center library for you to read while hanging out there, along with authentic board games for you to play together. See below for a few specific recommendations by proficiency level.
For who would like a more communal reading experience or simply some more detailed recommendations for longer texts (novels and novellas) to work with, please contact Frau Wood at Jessica.Wood@nau.edu to be invited to the Lesekreis group, giving you access to a shared folder with materials, recommendations, and a Facebook page for book club organization (depending on interest in any given semester or summer).
German Reading Recommendations by Level
German Reading Recommendations by Level
Reading Recommendations at Various Proficiency Levels
This list (which will be added to gradually) uses the Common European Reference Scale to give you recommendations of what books might be a decent place for you to start your reading adventures. For access to the shared Lesekreis drive with a collection of many PDFs of these books, please contact Frau Wood. We also have many of these books in physical form in the GELL Center, but for the longer ones, I would recommend getting the eBooks to start off with, because most of them will have a feature where you can long-press on a word to get an English translation (Kindle definitely does). I would also suggest getting access to the Audiobook for titles you really like. Listening along whilst you read is a great way to pick up pronunciation as you go. (YouTube has many of them available on and off, if you do a search)
A2/B1:
“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (Roald Dahl): Not originally written in German, but a lovely story that translates well. Most other famous Dahl books are also available in German (like Hexen Hexen! PDF in Lesekreis folder), so they’re generally good options.
“'Maus” (Art Spiegelman): An award-winning graphic novel set in Nazi Germany.
“Der kleine Prinz.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry): translated from the French, a beautiful fantasy about hope and childhood.
B1:
“Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen” (JK Rowling): It’s Harry Potter, yo. You know the drill. (PDF in Lesekreis folder)
“Der kleine Hobbit” (J.R.R. Tolkien): I have no idea how many times I read this in German as a kid, but it was a lot (only read it once in English, actually). Tolkien translates beautifully into German. I found a not-very-well-formatted PDF version I put into the Mittelstufe folder, so you can read it there, or if you find the terrible formatting distracting, it’s not too expensive to buy on ebook.
B2:
“Momo” (Michael Ende): A beautiful story about childhood, adulthood, and the value of time.
“Die unendliche Geschichte” (Michael Ende): Michael Ende also wrote Die unendliche Geschichte, which was one of my favorite books growing up (they made an adorable movie out of the first half in the ‘80s; the second half is really weird, but still good) and is included in the Lesekreis drive as a PDF in the Mittelstufe folder.
“Tintenherz” (Cornelia Funke): Wildly popular with older German kids, this beautifully written YA fantasy was also made into a film. PDF of first book in the series available in the Mittelstufe folder. Also available on Audiobook on Amazon (and usually YouTube).
C1/C2:
“Das Parfüm” (Patrick Süskind): A man born with an extraordinary sense of smell and no personal scent himself becomes a famous and obsessed parfumier in Paris of the mid eighteenth century, a city that is the perfect backdrop for a story that is dark, disturbing, original, and gripping. Adapted into a mediocre film in English in 2006 and the inspiration for a 2018 German TV series available on Netflix. But really, read the book.
“Der Vorleser” (Bernhard Schlink): A parable about memory and how post-war generations deal with the Holocaust, along with the myriad ways power can be misused. Heavy but fascinating material. Adapted into an English film in 2008. Again, read the book.
“Jakob der Lügner.” (Jurek Becker): A story about survival in a Jewish ghetto that explores how storytelling can shape both hope and despair. Adapted into a beautiful film through the East German DEFA film organization and later into a less faithful American adaptation starring Robin Williams.
“Kassandra” (Christa Wolf): An engrossing free retelling of the fall of Troy from the perspective of the ‘cursed’ princess Kassandra exploring what it means to be human and how power structures in society shape the life and death of its people. Christa Wolf also retold the story of Medea in the same vein (also recommended).
“Weiter leben: eine Jugend” (Ruth Klüger): A memoir not only of her early childhood in Vienna, her internment and eventual escape from the concentration camp Theresienstadt, and her immigration to the U.S. with her mother, but also of what it is to be a girl defined as Other, to live with trauma, and to integrate those elements into your adult life without having them entirely define you. Dr. Klüger’s own translation and extension of her novel in English, “Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered,” published about 20 years after the original, is also highly recommended.
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