The Oblong Office

Book 12/2026: Giulia Zaggiotti, China. Der illustrierte Guide ("China. The Illustrated Guide")

I've read this one parallel to Apostles of Mercy, but not every evening, and also usually just 2-4 pages. It's a hardcover book with lots of drawn illustrations and not as much text as one might expect. The illustrations were done by Sabrina Ferrero, and I quite liked her style.

It's basically a guide with information most suitable for tourists planning a visit to China. It has chapters on travelling, culture, food and drinks, important holidays, etc. It pretty much leaves out politics as much as possible. And when it refers to historical events, it carefully tries to avoid touchy subjects. For example, there's a chapter on Mao, but it doesn't mention anything problematic like the millions of people dying because of his Great Leap Forward policy or the atrocities committed during the Cultural Revolution. Because that would interfere with the overall sunny view on China in this book. Also, tourists might just not care about realistic aspects of history.

So I'm kind of put off by this book. On the one hand, it provides you with helpful vocabulary and superficial info on China which is enough for tourists looking for a good time in this very old and culturally as well as historically significant country. On the other hand, at times it read like propaganda. Zaggiotti is an Italian whose work entails lots of cooperation between Italy and China; she also used to work in China. Which gives her expertise, no doubt about that. But what she wrote here is too shallow and, more importantly, too biased for me to enjoy it. Therefore, I won't keep this book.

Book 10/2026: Maike Weißplug, Hannah Arendt

A few months ago, I was visiting the "didacta", a trade fair for educators. One publishing house there, famous for publishing mainly classic plays and novels in a distinct layout (yellow, pocketsize), was Reclam. And apparently they have a new book series called "100 pages"; these books are a little bigger, with each volume focusing on one topic. And the topics are of a very wide variety. As they say on their homepage: "Unterhaltsames Wissen für Neugierige und Fans auf 100 Seiten zu Geschichte, Gesellschaft und Politik, Leben, Gesundheit und Natur sowie Kunst und Kultur" ("Entertaining knowledge on 100 pages for the curious and for fans on history, society and politics, life, health and nature as well as art and culture").

Long story short: I bought three on a whim - one about the Bible, one about feminism and one about the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the last of which I started with.

The book gives you information about her as a person as well as about her work. Her personal experiences as well as her opinion on the events she lived through. It ends with some musings on how she would've reacted to today's crises and challenges, given that some of what she's written before can easily be applied to now. After the 100 pages, there's a list of her books as well as a link to a famous interview from 1964, where she sat down with journalist Günther Gaus for a one-hour interview on German TV. The interview is still available online. I've already opened it on a tab to watch it later. There are also other recommendations, e.g. a podcast, a novel, a graphic novel, a movie and other literature about her.

Hannah Arendt was born in Germany in 1906 and actually grew up in the same town as my grandma, in Königsberg in East Prussia. Both of her parents' families had fled Russia in the 19th century to escape the persecution of Jews there. In 1924 she went to Marburg to study Philosophy there under Martin Heidegger, and apparently they also had an affair until she moved again in 1926. I don't have to tell you what would happen a few years later - after being imprisoned in 1933 for aiding communists persecuted by the Nazis, she flees Germany and ends up in Paris, where she meets her husband Heinrich Blücher. Then World War II leads to France being invaded, and she is once again imprisoned. Then she flees, and after reaching first Marseille and then Lisbon she enters US soil in May 1941. Ten years later she becomes a US citizen.

Really, her life was wild. And she also had a very keen eye on current events. She wrote about events in the US, e.g. the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam protests. She attended the Eichmann trial in Israel, during which she wrote about the banality of evil.

She was definitely an interesting, intelligent person. She died in 1975 in New York City, almost 70 years old. I'm certainly interested in reading from her now, not just about her. I hope I won't forget it.

I won't continue with the other books from this series, because there are other books that have been waiting for over two years now.

Hannah Arendt

Book 07/2026: Katja Berlin, Wann eine Idee für gut befunden wird ("When an idea is considered to be good")

Katja Berlin is a columnist for the German newspaper Die Zeit for which she draws "pies of truth" ("Torten der Wahrheit") on a weekly basis. These are pie charts (sometimes also bar charts, rarely flow charts and line charts) with which she satirizes current social and political discourse. For example, the title is answered in a pie chart, where 12,5% are labelled "When a smart woman says it", 12,5% are for "When a competent woman says it", and the rest (75%) say "When a man repeats it one more time".

This is only her newest collection of published pie charts; previous installations were more focussed on specific topics - class divide, feminism, children and right-wing populism - whereas this one covers the whole spectrum.

I got this book last week when I watched her live at a book presentation. I also got an autograph from her, and I may have been a little fangirly (but not too much, I hope). She spoke about her life, her job experiences and how she became a columnist (and that she can actually live off of it).

If you don't want to pay money for this collection, you can also follow her on Instagram where she sometimes also posts more charts. She used to be on the social media app formerly known as Twitter, but I think she's left. Since the book is "just" a collection of charts, it really doesn't take long to read. Which is why I'll post about the second book I've bought from her in a couple of minutes.

Book 06/2026: Arjen Lubach, Stoorzender ("jammer")

As told in my last post, this book took a long time to read, often with months of neglicence in between. This was mostly because this is the very first book I've ever read in Dutch. Given that my Dutch skills are somewhat adequate but not at all fluent, reading Lubach's collection of memories felt at times more like a chore. But the content was not the problem.

Arjen Lubach is a Dutch entertainer best known for his TV show Zondag met Lubach, and the first time I've ever heard of him was right after Donald Trump's first inauguration speech, where the latter famously declared "America first". Lubach then produced a Dutch promotional video called "The Netherlands second". It's very funny and spawned numerous other "[Country] second" videos all over the world - including fictional worlds like the Star Wars galaxy. Here's the original video (Link).

So the book is about things that he experienced over the course of two years. It is split into six chapters, all of which are named after the places where these things happened: Los Angeles, Vlieland, New York, Friesland, Sweden and Amsterdam. He mentions several people by name, be it colleagues or friends, except for his girlfriends. They are only referred to by their pronouns. I don't know whether he keeps this information private on principle or because they asked him to, but it doesn't matter, I'm not demanding disclosure here.

It's not always funny stories or weird stories. Some are more solemn and give you something to contemplate.

His writing was corresponding well to my reading skill level. I didn't know or understand every word, but most of them could be inferred from the content or similar words. So it was a good learning exercise, but that still made it feel like a chore. Some day I might read Dutch books the way I've been reading English books for years now.

Book 01/2026: Maximilian Doeckel & Jonathan Focke, "Aber meiner Tante hat's geholfen" - Wie wir Scheinargumente, unwissenschaftlichen Unsinn und Pseudoexperten entlarven ("But it has helped my aunt" - How we expose bogus arguments, unscientific nonsense and pseudoexperts")

Yeah, that's a long title. This non-fiction book has been my commute book since I'd finished John Sinclair. Doeckel and Focke are working for Quarks, a science program at the public broadcast channel WDR. They also have a podcast, Quarks Science Cops, in which they tackle the tactics of people using pseudoscience to sell them products and sow distrust in actual science. This book is basically an addendum to their podcast.

This book contained lots of useful information and still managed to be entertaining to read. They've also cited all their sources for readers to check for themselves. First, they explain the limits in our human perception. Then they explain why science itself is very important and also how it works. Then they dive into science washing, i.e. making something sound scientific even though it's anything but. Then they show how people try to wiggle out of showing any kind of scientific proof for the quality of their products before delving into the power of doubt and how it is used to sow mistrust in, for example, the effects of smoking or the dangers of climate change. They finish off by giving tipps on what to do next (or what should happen next, which is not necessarily under the control of the reader).

I don't think there are translations available, so if you happen to be fluent in German and are interested in science and/or know people who have fallen prey to pseudoscientists, this book is for you. Scientific literacy is at a low point, even though we've never had as much knowledge available as now.