Hello Language Lovers,

Professionally, I was a bit absent, but I assure you that in between all the aperitifs and weekends, I worked like a busy bee on a diverse range of projects, covering everything from fashion to legal to tourism in Switzerland, and now also audiovisual lifestyle projects.

Basically, I didn’t have a minute of spare time and craved sleeping constantly.

Of course, I never stopped reading because it is my habit and possibly my most pleasurable drug, or my elixir for survival on this planet with now 8 billion people (and I only like a bunch of them).

I just finished the 600-something page book „Anéantir“ from one of my top European authors and intellectuals, Michel Houellebecq.

If you haven’t read „A Houellebecq“ yet, I urge you to do so, but don’t start with his last book, Anéantir. On one side, it’s typical, but on the other, it’s too soft for what we are used to reading. Also, maybe it’s his most politically correct book, for so many reasons:

• Does he make peace with Christendom?
• Does he have cancer (because he smoked himself to death) and is he prepared to die?
• What’s all about this suicide theme? That is quite new.
• And how come he has regular sex with his regular partner (and seems to also like it)?

Of course, elderly women are discarded from his worldview. Every man has a second woman who is younger and more dedicated to him. This is quite boring, but is this what men really want and dream about? We should face that.

Then there’s politics, which is also tedious and only interesting from an observation standpoint. Maybe he just wants to put a mirror in front of us.

And there is death, death everywhere: sick people, normal people preparing to die, and the thought of suicide as a way out of problems.

If I didn’t love and admire him like a groupie, I’d say I’m glad he wrote a different (but similar) book, that his style and lexical choices – especially the adjectives – demonstrate such a sublime command of the French language in a way that touched me in this book as well.

He is a one-of-a-kind writer and avant-gardist, one of the last living intellectuals in Europe, but is he preparing to die? If yes, I would really like to meet him. If you’re reading this, Houellebecq, let’s get drunk together!

I have compiled a list of books that will keep me well occupied until Christmas and maybe into 2023. Feel free to get inspired.

Have a good time until we next speak in 2023!