January 2014

I got tagged! Yes, that came rather unexpectedly but I enjoyed answering the questions and even more making up my own ones for you. So thanks a million to the girls @ B-Team on Books for tagging me! …

I can’t remember how I first learned about this novel. I can’t remember what made me buy it. However, I remember that I ordered it at my local bookshop one early summer shortly before I went on holidays in France with my Mum and my sister. I remember, because I started this novel when we hit the road and couldn’t put it aside. I read it while we drove through Germany, I read it at that strange and blazing hot hostel in Freiburg, I read it on our way through half of France, and I finished literally the second we arrived at the campsite in the Gorges du Chassezsac. It was the magic of the novel that glued me to its pages. Since then, including this one, I reread it three times . . .

This novel is the great surprise of 2013. A wonderful (fairy)tale about good and evil, friendship, love, and beauty with complex lovable and loathsome characters that also happens to be magnificently written. It is both hilariously funny and heartbreakingly sad, predictable and utterly unexpected.

As always, I didn’t read either the novels I planned to nor the ones I should really truly have read. Instead, I spent my time bingereading the 2nd and 3rd installments of the Black Magician Trilogy, worked as a Christmas presents wrapping assistant at a bookshop and went on a short trip to Vienna to watch The Hobbit #2 and the musical Elisabeth, which I’m completely in love with – oh, and to visit a dear friend, of course 😉 ! Unfortunately, now I really have to write my bachelor thesis, so bye bye, my dearest blog! I hope I won’t neglect you all too much these next 1 1/2 months …

The last 2013 additions to my library. It’s a colourful mixture of long awaited novels, beautiful covers, unusual genres, hyped series, and some horse novels (well, it’s me, after all) …

I’m a book-buying addict, I’ve always been. I tend to buy more books than I will probably ever read and yet what happened in 2013 went far beyond my normal standards of crazy. I’ve never bought so many books in the course of one year before and I’m not even sure why I went over the top. I blame part of it on getting involved in the book blogosphere: suddenly, I was made aware of new releases, discovered new novels and series left and right and got more recommendations than I could handle. I wanted to belong, so I got some of the novels everyone talked about, or novels that were group reads. Don’t get me wrong, I love it! If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have read the novels that became my 2013 favourites. So here are my crazy newbie & TBR pile stats of 2013 …

Wait, is it 2014 already?!

First, I wanted to let you know that I’m currently writing my bachelor thesis which I have to hand in in February. This means that I won’t have much time for blogging. Still, I’ll try to give you a couple of posts although I don’t really see it happen right now. I’m sorry, but I will be back soon …