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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Bolaño had a masterful way of creating suspense and writing dialogue. This novel really gets at the creepy psychological undertones of playing war games in which the death and destruction of millions is abstracted away to a question of moves and strategy. For Udo, the death of his real life friend and the loss of his job and girlfriend are no more important than the deployment of his imaginary troops.
dark
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
Creates a great atmosphere of something threatening and builds towards an utterly disturbing feeling. Sadly, it ends in an anti climax.
What just happened? I am purely giving this 5 for confusion and awe.
I don't really know what to say. I loved how the main charachter develops and how the diary entries are mixed with game descriptions. I love the language and the "dialogue". I love this story, but I really don't know what happened and why and I couldn't care less, because this is all you need and all a story needs to keep the reader/listener in it's grip. I will very likely go through this again as I will and have done with Bolaño's other work. I am truly enthralled that such a writer has existed such a short time ago. His works make me feel like at home and a bit humbled too. Truly a master of his craft he was.
I'm not sure what this reminds me of except it's written like its older than it is. A contemporary Goethe who shoots himself in the head just to be woken up/born again. So many bubbles burst. So many dicks teased. I highly recommend this for anyone who loves the mundane and who has ever lost interest or doubted their enthusiam with a subject someone else didn't understand :) Also to those who've had strange and more or less romantic encounters in strange places and times of their lives.
I don't really know what to say. I loved how the main charachter develops and how the diary entries are mixed with game descriptions. I love the language and the "dialogue". I love this story, but I really don't know what happened and why and I couldn't care less, because this is all you need and all a story needs to keep the reader/listener in it's grip. I will very likely go through this again as I will and have done with Bolaño's other work. I am truly enthralled that such a writer has existed such a short time ago. His works make me feel like at home and a bit humbled too. Truly a master of his craft he was.
I'm not sure what this reminds me of except it's written like its older than it is. A contemporary Goethe who shoots himself in the head just to be woken up/born again. So many bubbles burst. So many dicks teased. I highly recommend this for anyone who loves the mundane and who has ever lost interest or doubted their enthusiam with a subject someone else didn't understand :) Also to those who've had strange and more or less romantic encounters in strange places and times of their lives.
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Un libro que, por su título, el lector creerá que se desarrolla en Alemania o que, al menos, es sobre nazis. Y aunque tiene algo de alemanes y una que otra referencia sobre nazismo, el título alude a un juego de guerra.
Está escrito a modo de diario. El periodo que transcurre es de un poco más de 1 mes (entre el 20 de agosto y el 30 de septiembre). En él Udo, nuestro protagonista, relata sus primeras vacaciones con su novia Ingeborg. Decide llevarla a la Costa Brava, en Cataluña, al mismo hotel donde frecuentemente vacacionaba cuando era un niño, junto a su familia.
Udo es alemán. Es el campeón nacional de Tercer Reich. Durante las vacaciones, conocen a otra pareja de alemanes, con quienes empiezan a pasar tiempo, quizá más del indicado. También conocen a personajes sospechosos y uno, en particular, solitario y un tanto extraño… el Quemado, quien tendrá un protagonismo importante, hecho que se deja entrever desde un principio.
Siento que tiene demasiado relleno innecesario. En algún momento se teje un embrollo demasiado grande capaz de hacer perder al lector el interés. Esto hizo que, de la mitad en adelante, el peso de cada página se sintiera, aunque había una sensación de que algo se iba a tornar interesante en algún momento.
Y lo hace. Hay que entender que todo lo referido a las vacaciones, la playa, el verano, es el relleno, aburrido a veces, monótono, repetitivo. Lo interesante está en el juego, que era, además, una pasión real de Bolaño. Pero no en los movimientos del tablero como tal, sino en cómo la primera parte del juego, cuando Udo va ganando, se relaciona directamente con su noviazgo, y luego, la segunda parte del juego, cuando el Quemado toma un rol dentro de él realmente importante, se relaciona con Frau Else (a quien dejaré que el lector descubra solo) y la perdición que empieza a experimentar el alemán.
Al final no sé si recomendarla. Es una lectura interesante. Aburrida en algunos tramos, pero interesante.
Está escrito a modo de diario. El periodo que transcurre es de un poco más de 1 mes (entre el 20 de agosto y el 30 de septiembre). En él Udo, nuestro protagonista, relata sus primeras vacaciones con su novia Ingeborg. Decide llevarla a la Costa Brava, en Cataluña, al mismo hotel donde frecuentemente vacacionaba cuando era un niño, junto a su familia.
Udo es alemán. Es el campeón nacional de Tercer Reich. Durante las vacaciones, conocen a otra pareja de alemanes, con quienes empiezan a pasar tiempo, quizá más del indicado. También conocen a personajes sospechosos y uno, en particular, solitario y un tanto extraño… el Quemado, quien tendrá un protagonismo importante, hecho que se deja entrever desde un principio.
Siento que tiene demasiado relleno innecesario. En algún momento se teje un embrollo demasiado grande capaz de hacer perder al lector el interés. Esto hizo que, de la mitad en adelante, el peso de cada página se sintiera, aunque había una sensación de que algo se iba a tornar interesante en algún momento.
Y lo hace. Hay que entender que todo lo referido a las vacaciones, la playa, el verano, es el relleno, aburrido a veces, monótono, repetitivo. Lo interesante está en el juego, que era, además, una pasión real de Bolaño. Pero no en los movimientos del tablero como tal, sino en cómo la primera parte del juego, cuando Udo va ganando, se relaciona directamente con su noviazgo, y luego, la segunda parte del juego, cuando el Quemado toma un rol dentro de él realmente importante, se relaciona con Frau Else (a quien dejaré que el lector descubra solo) y la perdición que empieza a experimentar el alemán.
Al final no sé si recomendarla. Es una lectura interesante. Aburrida en algunos tramos, pero interesante.
tense
medium-paced
This was a friend recommendation who told me to read The Third Reich if I was curious about Bolaño because it was his shortest novel, and many of his other works are like 500-600 pages. I was an English major but I'm still intimidated by books with many pages. It's not an uncommon story. That being said, this book was a lot of fun. The narrator, Udo Berger is a typical gamer. Wonderfully obtuse and entitled. A loser. I've come to love reading feckless narrators. The story is one of trying to hold on to rational thought while getting pulled into impulse and dream logic. I sometimes found myself laughing because something was funny, but I also laughed sometimes because I was uncomfortable and didn't know how to respond otherwise. This story perfectly walks the line between funny and foreboding with its characters. A German visiting Spain, it puts Udo (and you the reader) in that situation of hanging out with people that you'd never spend time with in your home country, but by consequence of being abroad at the same time, you find yourself spending many moments together. The game passages are wild. They're so intense and specific, and even from the 80s, the obsessiveness of modern gamer culture as I know it is perfectly captured. I thought while reading that Bolaño was describing a fictional game, but found out later that Third Reich is a real board game, which puts those passages in a different light, as now all those sentences have meaning that is tied to gamer culture in this universe (which I find funny but also kind of horrifying).