Some good books to read in deutsche while learning it?

Ostzonensuppenwürfelmachenkrebs

>Kafka
>complicated

Who are you quoting?

If you can read Kafka's Kleine Fabel than I recommend moving to some kids books. Advice from a guy living in Germany, just finished Der Kleine Prinz cuz I never read it in English.

Kleine Fabel
»Ach«, sagte die Maus, »die Welt wird enger mit jedem Tag. Zuerst war sie so breit, daß ich Angst hatte, ich lief weiter und war glücklich, daß ich endlich rechts und links in der Ferne Mauern sah, aber diese langen Mauern eilen so schnell aufeinander zu, daß ich schon im letzten Zimmer bin, und dort im Winkel steht die Falle, in die ich laufe.« – »Du mußt nur die Laufrichtung ändern«, sagte die Katze und fraß sie.

Read Bahnwärter Thiel

>checked
Gebrüder Grimm perhaps for a serious new learner.

Kafka is pretty damn hard for a beginner (not the themes but literary style).

I read German at uni and we only studied Kafka in our final year (after a year abroad in Germany), even then it could be pretty hard.

I have loads of simpler texts I can recommend to you that we studied during first year but I'll be torn apart since it's all icky liberal stuff.

Maybe start with Goethe's poems or some Schiller and Lessing plays.

Although I havent read them myself I'd suggest you check out the Brothers Grimm tales. I think they should be pretty easy to get into since most of them are written for children.

That guy who's post I was responding to obviously. What an incredibly dumb question.

...

"Der goldene Handschuh"-Heinz Strunk

as a modern novel and a damn good book if you are intermediate and want to read some modern use of speech.

Maybe he is illustrating some deeper question about the notion of identity and knowledge in a digital world. Perhaps you are talking to a computer and user was pondering this.

Or he's retarded

>Kafka
Actually not that bad of an idea, especially if you already have read a translation. It's fairly recent, and the vocabulary he uses is very common and managable.
>Goethe
Would not recommend to read for learning, you might start to sound like a massive sperg. He writes poetically and in a slightly older german that sounds strange to modern german speakers - I know people that have trouble understanding what he's even writing about. Think Shakespeare, you probably wouldn't want to learn his english. Save Faust 1 for later when you can fully appreciate his powerful eloquence. Skip Faust 2.

I can give you a few recommondations of simpler books we read in high school, roughly 1984 or Lord of the Flies tier of difficulty and relevance to culture (i.e. virtually everyone has read at least some of them):
>Stefan Zweig, Schachnovelle
Psychological, main character is a Gestapo prisoner.
>Patrick Süskind, Das Parfüm
Historical Fiction, it's well written, a very pleasant read.
>Robert Musil, Nachlass zu Lebzeiten
Many short stories. Really short, like 1 page each.

...

do you have any recommendations for french learners?

Thanks for posting that snippet, I'm stoked that I understood it.

Mother Courage and Her Children

yes, start your own thread.

Der Dativ ist dem Genetiv sein Tod
It is an easy to read and non-serious bookseries about the correct usage of the German language.

Letters to a young poet - Rainer Maria Rilke.

Trust me

Those double dubs demand an answer. The Little Prince, you fuck

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fuck you

Paul Maar - Sams series

Those are children's books, but they're pretty awesome and might be a great starting point if you're just learning the language.

Give me your icky liberal stuff damn you

Btw, torrent "German graded readers"

Dürrenmatts plays aren't too difficult in terms of grammar or vocabulary, and they still manage to convey some pretty interesting ideas

Or, if you like children's books you could read Wunschpunsch and Jim Knopf. Momo and Neverending Story are on another level though, so I'd recommend you stay away from them for now.

>>Patrick Süskind, Das Parfüm
>Historical Fiction, it's well written, a very pleasant read.
Das ist doch nicht dein Ernst.

I've been speaking German for seven years (off and on and often not seriously) and am about to take the C1 exam. I find things like Glasperlenspiel to be difficult reads. Am I just a brainlet? Why would you suggest for an almost complete beginner to read Hesse? I wouldn't even have him/her read Siddhartha until they've got at least a year and a half with German.

OP, you should start with Kafka's short stories as mentioned. I'd also recommend "Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte", childrens' stories as mentioned, fairytales like from Grimm (Märchen), and "vereinfacht" (simplified) versions of books- many of these will have keys and some pictures to help. Best of luck, it is a really fun language.

this is some quality meme posting

Why is German so hard compared to every other Germanic language?

You'd think the language that lends itself to the namesake would be much more straightforward than its bastard children.

no, languages simplify over time and lose unneeded grammar, like if you look at how fucking complex latin is compared to it's derivatives, same thing...which makes me wonder something, how is it that language gets more simple over time? was the original indo-european language insanely complex?

>no, languages simplify over time and lose unneeded grammar

Tell German to get a move on desu

>how is it that language gets more simple over time?
Probably merged with other local tongues where the simpler parts are more easily absorbed from both parts. I just made this up on the spot though but it's a semi-educated guess. People in Sweden (Stockholm at least) are opting for "han" (subject pronoun) over "honom" (object pronoun) which is pretty disgusting imo, but SO common. In fact, only 10 years ago I never heard people confusing the two. Somewhat similar to "who" and "whom" in English.

It has become simpler since Alt/Mittelhochdeutsch, having gone from a synthetic language to a much more analytical one. Flexions like the ones we see in the dative case have generally been dropped from the other cases, the genitive case is somewhat dying out etc.

yeah, there's a theory that languages simplify when there's a big influx of immigrants who learn the language as a second language and don't really understand the nuances of the original but reach a level where they can communicate well enough, sort of like how in america the african-american simplified "to be" usage is getting picked up by esl learners and becoming more common, and if latin started to split apart into degenerate language around the same time the barbarians started to flood in i guess that theory checks out

German's pretty easy though. The hardest thing is getting the different cases down, but if you're just reading that's not really hard. In speaking people will also forgive for saying Dem when you need to say Den.