New Year’s time is reading time. We asked our readers about their favorite books of the year 2022. Your favourites: Advisors of various kinds – whether career, self-optimization and self-reflection or finance. In addition, there are current topics of our time, whether energy crisis or digitization. And of course novels should not be missing. A selection.
“Which types of insurance are (basically) useful?” or “How do you report damage correctly?” These are questions that Bastian Kunkel answers in “Totally (un)insured”. With an approach of casual writing and understandable explanations, the author manages to break down the barriers on the tiresome topic of insurance.
With the book, he is continuing on the path he is already successfully treading on social media. He differs from the usual advisors in that he consistently takes the customer’s point of view. It’s the mix of introductory information and background knowledge that makes the book worth reading.
In “Stolen Focus”, the British journalist Johann Hari describes the dramatic loss of attention in the majority of people – one of the most drastic psychological problems of our time. “The book encourages self-reflection and, in my opinion, should be read by all generations,” writes Handelsblatt reader Klaus-Martin Vierhaus.
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From those “who have difficulty with the new speed and did not grow up with computers, but work with them every day”, as well as from the younger people who grew up with the technology because there is a tendency towards dependencies.
Freedom through money – or not?
Andreas Eschbach: Freedom money
Lubbe Verlag
Cologne 2022
528 pages
25 euros
Andreas Eschbach is one of the most successful German authors. The science fiction specialist has already devised video recordings of Jesus and a computer system that enabled the Nazi regime to monitor citizens.
In his new novel, set in the not too distant future, machines do most of the work of humans. These, in turn, have a “free money” – a basic income that offers them financial security. Everything seems fine until the inventor of the freedom money dies, as does his opponent, a journalist. Who is behind this? Is it a higher power?
No desire for the end of the world
Vince Ebert: Ray of light instead of blackout
dtv publishing company
Munich 2022
224 pages
15 euro
Energy crisis and climate change – such a serious topic written down by a cabaret artist? It works. Ebert is a qualified physicist and science cabaret artist. In his book “Lichtblick instead of Blackout” he doesn’t play it down, but wants to set a humorous counterpoint to a widespread rhetoric about the end of the world.
He hits the nerve of Handelsblatt reader Wolfgang Grabitz: Ebert writes “in understandable language how we are manipulated in terms of climate, electromobility and environmental problems”. A plea for thinking about the right way to go about this important problem.
Parallel World Deluxe
Neal StephensonSnow Crash
DelRey
NYC 2022
576 pages
32.99 euros
The Metaverse is a digital world in which users can move using virtual reality glasses. As avatars, virtual alter egos, they can do everything there that they do in the real world: work, shop, do things.
These virtual worlds are still at the beginning of their existence, their success is uncertain – but corporations like Meta have high hopes. The ideas have been around for 30 years. As early as 1992, the author Neal Stephenson created the terms metaverse and avatar for his science fiction novel “Snow Crash” – published in an English deluxe edition at the end of November.
Small change, big success
James Clear: The 1% Method – The Success Journal
Goldman publishing house
Munich 2022
240 pages
13 euros
Translation: Annika Tschöpe
His guide “The 1% Method” was a bestseller two years ago. This year author James Clear pushed the matching success journal – a combination of notebook, diary and habit tracker.
The 1% method states that even the smallest changes in habits can have a big impact. An interesting approach in times when self-optimization is almost de rigueur.
Clear provides detailed, psychologically sound guidance. The success journal is intended to help you control yourself during implementation – and thus lead you to your goal faster.
Against any restriction
Bonnie Garmus: A Matter of Chemistry
Piper publisher
Munich 2022
464 pages
22 euros
Translation: Ulrike Wasel, Klaus Timmermann
Scientist Elizabeth Zott fought for recognition as a chemist in the rigidly patriarchal world of the early 1960s. Should her fate really end in a cooking show? A Question of Chemistry, the debut novel by US author Bonnie Garmus, is the best-selling book of 2022.
Handelsblatt reader Gabriela Spier, herself a chemist, judges: “A wonderful example of how powerful female power can be, even under countless restrictions and all kinds of obstacles.” She recommends the book above all to male managers because “although a lot has happened on the subject , there are still disadvantages for women in almost all sectors”.
More than stable networks
Michael Resch: Digital Desert Germany
Heyne publisher
Munich 2022
144 pages
12 euros
At the latest during the corona pandemic, Germany recognized that the country had a lot of catching up to do digitally. Companies had to adapt to working from home in the short term, schools were far from being set up for homeschooling.
Michael Resch, Director at the High Performance Center Stuttgart, raises the alarm in “Digital Desert Germany”. The deficits have accumulated to such an extent that Germany is in danger of falling behind in many areas.
Resch’s appeal: It not only requires stable networks, legal security and digital education, but above all a reduction in German skepticism about digitization
Against car dependency
Katja Diehl: Autocorrect
S Fisher
Frankfurt 2022
272 pages
18.00 euros
With her demand, Katja Diehl is deliberately provocative: “Everyone should have the right to lead a life without their own car.” In “Autocorrect” the traffic expert questions the omnipotence of the car in Germany.
She explains how the car became the number one mode of transport and shows the constraints that make people dependent on the car again and again. The author encourages self-reflection, questioning of learned movement patterns and calls on each individual to take action so that the traffic turnaround is successful. With her book, Diehl won the readers’ prize of the German Business Book Prize.
The power of the right idea
Christoph Keese: Life Changer – Future made in Germany
Penguin publisher
Munich 2022
336 pages
24 euros
Christoph Keese, longtime journalist and now “Spiegel” manager, is a kind of “Homo Faber”. Technology has always found an answer for him. Ever since Keese sat in on Silicon Valley for a few months, he has had an insatiable thirst for new things – and he exudes this in his books.
In “Life Changer” he takes us on a journey through Germany and Europe, always on the lookout for people who, with their start-up companies, are the right game changers for a better life. What counts for Keese is not the compulsion of capital, but the power of the idea. His message: “We can do it. A new era of technical breakthroughs has begun.”
echo chambers of outrage
Richard David Precht, Harald Welzer: The Fourth Estate
S Fisher
Frankfurt 2022
288 pages
22 euros
With “The Fourth Estate”, the philosopher Richard David Precht and the futurologist Harald Welzer have written a critique of the media industry in which they themselves like to operate. The successful authors write of a “self-alignment” of the media, which would succumb to a tendency to be one-sided, simplifying, moralizing, outrageous and defamatory.
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This contradicts the self-image of the Handelsblatt – and has now also been refuted by a study by Mainz and Munich scientists. Nevertheless, literary critic Denis Scheck said: “An important book that provokes thought and questioning.”
The way to happiness and success
Lars Amend, Rudolf Schenker: Rock Your Life
Kailash Publishing
Munich 2022
384 pages
18 euros
“‘Rock Your Life’ has the power to positively influence the lives of many people around the world.” This is how bestselling author Paulo Coelho judged the book by Scorpions founder Rudolf Schenker.
The band’s guitarist, together with his co-author Lars Amend, created what was then a completely new genre twelve years ago, the guidebook biography. It has now been published in a completely revised new edition – with a foreword by the Brazilian star author Coelho. In it, the authors describe Schenker’s path – and that not only the hard-working can be successful, but also the dreamer who doesn’t give up.
East-West error with consequences
Maxim Leo: The hero of the Friedrichstrasse station
Kiepenheuer & Witsch
Cologne 2022
304 pages
22 euros
Michael Hartung, that’s his name, “The Hero from Friedrichstrasse Station” in Maxim Leo’s novel of the same name. Hartung, an unsuccessful video store owner, is said to have set the course as a signalman in the GDR era in such a way that there could be a mass flight from East to West. Inadvertently. Or is not it correct?
The successful author Maxim Leo wrote down the story of how this error came about so vividly that it is the favorite book of the year for Handelsblatt reader Ute Marquardt: “A fast-paced story, ranging from funny to tragicomic, in which both Ossi and Wessi clichés are nicely balanced and made fun of in equal measure will.”
The ideal of individual freedom
Anna Schneider: Freedom begins with the ego
dtv publishing company
Munich 2022
112 pages
12 euros
Anna Schneider, born in 1990, is probably one of the busiest German-speaking journalists. The Austrian works as chief reporter for the newspaper “Die Welt”.
So it is not surprising that she has now also written a book about freedom: “Freedom begins with the ego”. In it, Schneider advocates a greater focus on individual freedom, which she has suffered too much from, especially due to the corona lockdowns.
Schneider complains that anyone who professes individual freedom to be the ideal is quickly suspected of being ruthless egoism. The lawyer likes to polarize – whether on Twitter or now in the long version.
More: Climbers, changers, role models – these are the people of the year 2022