Been a while since i read this, but it was a good a book. Worth a few pennies and your time to read. Enjoyable little yarn. ( )

Ich habe nicht das Buch gelesen, sondern die komplette Lesung als Audiobuch gehört.
Dem Buch habe ich 4 Sterne vergeben, obwohl es mir weniger gefallen hat. Das ausschlaggebende dafür war die tolle Leistung des Sprechers Andreas Fröhlich (Die Drei ???).

Das Buch an sich fand ich eher fad. Der Titel sagt ja schon viel aus, aber trotzdem habe ich mich zwischendurch gefragt, wie alt denn nun der Protagonist wirklich ist, denn sein Verhalten ähnelte mehr dem eines kleinen Schuljungen, als dem eines Erwachsenen, der studiert hat. Eine gewisse Naivität ist ja durchaus eine gute Sache, aber in den meisten Teilen war es mir leider etwas zu viel.

Die Listen, die der Protagonist angefertigt hat, waren interessant und regten zum denken an aber leider haben auch sie nicht dafür sorgen können, dass mich das Buch wirklich interessiert hätte.
Es war schön, der Stimme des Sprechers zu folgen, aber schon etwas seltsam, als der Ton plötzlich aus war und ich mich fragte, ob mein Gerät abgestürzt ist oder es das wirklich schon war mit dem Buch. ( )

A lovely book about a young man trying to find some sense of meaning in his life, reminds me of The Catcher in the Rye's narrator, the nameless main character having a unique voice and way of seeing the world.
A perfect book for people who like to make lists. ( )

Sjov, underfundig og hyggelig bog, hvor forfatteren mikser virkelighed med fiktion. Sød hovedperson, der bedst kan beskrives med titlen på bogen. ( )

I’m curious, did you hear about this book from 1996, in the same way I did? That would have been in the political coverage of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Seems that Mayor Pete found the book while at Harvard, and when he discovered that the Norwegian author, Erlend Loe, didn’t have any other works that had been translated, he learned Norwegian. Mayor Pete was certainly an original politician in many ways.
Curiosity of discovery aside, this slim paperback is one very clever and original coming-of-age novel. The style is simple and tells of a young man who has dropped out of a MA program, isn’t working, has no obvious ambition, and is house sitting for his brother. He does have a compunction to make lists of all sorts of things, and to bounce a red ball off the wall for hours at a time. Oh, and he finds great comfort in one of the kids toys where you hammer the pegs through the bench, and then flip it over and pound them all right back. The simple things can many times be the most rewarding.
As little is expected of him, he does the simple things that bring him pleasure, the things that he can control, while all the major decisions of his life are currently over the horizon of this temporary phase of his life. He knows that they will come his way eventually, but he’s into the uncomplicated pleasures of life—while he can. [I can strongly relate to this situation, at his point in my own life.]
The writing reflects the simplicity of his life, as well as the self-controlled nature of his days. Many lives get complicated at this point—when one knows that the major decisions of life won’t be leaving you alone much longer. Many times those complications are drugs and other addictions. Another way is when someone start making a few or many of the myriad of self-destructive choices possible in life.
There are hoards of coming-of-age novels, stories in which characters feel that the time has come when they must grow up, must make all those major life decisions. However, just maybe, this stellar and slender novel is a grand example of the time in life before all that happens. Or, on the other hand, it may be not be showing what precedes, but what can supersede all that.
No matter how closely you feel to the life depicted within this story, this extremely funny and insightful book was a real treat to read and to relate to, and it is wonderfully original and fresh. ( )