Wrap-Up

June was a really mixed reading month. The first week was really hot so I fled my room and spend some wonderful reading hours at the Botanic Gardens. Sunshine, a soft wind, the chirping of birds and visits from curious squirrels – that’s what I consider peaceful quality reading time. For the rest of the month, however, I moved more or less into the library researching for my group presentation. One of the worst things of being a student is having to sit in a stuffy library room at 30°C, slowly but steadily turning into a puddle of sweat while reading outdated German books with sentences spanning five lines. The stress has been building up for the last couple of weeks so I deflected to reading rather short books, which means I started working on my horse novel TBR. I haven’t read so many horse novels in a very very long time.

But June wasn’t all bad and stressful. I went to Ingolstadt for a day to visit dearest Bou and we had such a great day! Naturally, we went to a bookshop and I managed to persuade her to buy The School for Good and Evil – or rather I bought it for her and she gave me her An Ember in the Ashes. She returned the favour by persuading me to buy that lovely H&M dress and I’m so grateful because although I wasn’t sure in the beginning, I really came to love it. We also went to the Napoleon exhibition, which was pretty cool, especially since we were able to experience first hand how pretty damn heavy those weapons were back then. We could barely lift that musket. After a short lunch we spend the rest of the afternoon chatting while our legs dangled in a lovely little stream.

I also spend a mostly lovely evening with SemaIV that involved peanut chocolate ice cream, peanut chicken curry, and us being really really really mad. We went to our favourite bookshop and had already been piling up books when we started with our favourite part: working our way through the boxes of English books, which is like Christmas. We’d already done that twice before and no one ever minded. This time, however, a salesperson suddenly stood before us and snapped at us. She was so unfriendly that we immediately left – without buying any of the books we already picked out. We were positively fuming for most of the rest of the evening.

1. Feather Bound by Sara Raughley
   

   Woah, this book was painful – not because of the writing style but the topic! It was really brutal to read the stuff about human trafficking, taking away a person’s free will, and manipulating and abusing them. I was really sick a couple of times. Unfortunately, the novel lost me after the first third. I quickly figured out what was going on and the ending was not as powerful as I hoped it would be.  3/5

2. Petra Sammelband I (Petra, #1-3) by Tulla Hagström
   [LT: Petra Omnibus Edition I (Petra, #1-3)]
   

3. Rette die Reitschule, Petra! (Petra, #4) by Tulla Hagström
   [LT: Save the Riding School, Petra! (Petra, #4)]
   

4. Die besten Reiterfreunde (Petra, #5) by Tulla Hagström
   [LT: The Best Rider Friends (Petra, #5)]

5. Petra und der Fohlenfrühling (Petra, #6) by Tulla Hagström
   [LT: Petra and the Foal Spring (Petra, #6)]

   I love Scandinavian horse novels. They tend to be more down to earth and serious than most. This series was no exception and I really liked it. However, it will forever bug me that the final book in the series was never translated and published in German. I hate when I’ll never know how it ends. 4-3-3-4/5

6. The Castle of Llyr (The Chronicles of Prydain, #3) by Lloyd Alexander
   [dt. Die Prinzessin von Llyr / Taran und die Zauberkatze (Taran, #3)]
   

7. Taran Wanderer (The Chronicles of Prydain, #4) by Lloyd Alexander
   [dt. Der Spiegel von Llunet / Taran und der Zauberspiegel (Taran, #4)]

   I really adore this series! It’s funny, magical, and Eilonwy is one of the greatest female characters in high fantasy I have ever met. I really missed her in the fourth instalment. 4-3/5

8. Silber: Das zweite Buch der Träume (Silber, #2) by Kerstin Gier
   [ET: Dream On (Silver, #2)]

   This one was a huge disappointment. Kerstin Gier’s YA books tend to be quite fluffy, but that’s fine as long as I’m properly entertained. This one was not as funny, entertaining, or exciting as the first one, which had me giggling a great deal. It was an ok read, but totally forgettable. To be honest, I can’t really remember anything about it and I just read it.  2/5

9. Nachtland (Die Seiten der Welt, #2) by Kai Meyer
   [LT: Night Land (The Pages of the World, #2)]

   I loved this one so so much! I had a rather hard time getting into the first one but this time, I immediately felt at home. Probably because I now have my anchor, which is Isis fucking Nimmernis. I love her to pieces! She’s so cool and the person I relate most to – which probably means that I am in fact getting older, no matter how much I try to persuade myself otherwise. The world is so fascinating with all the bookish magical stuff. It might just be the world I would want to live in – oh, just think about the possibility of actually meeting your bookish boyfriends … 5/5

10. Die Magie des Mondrings by Eleanor Jones
    [OT: Ring Around the Moon]
    

    Eleanor Jones books are either really silly or really great. Unfortunately, this was one of the silly ones. Also, I really didn’t get the ending. I’ve got no idea whether she’s still stuck or in which reality she’s now. It was really confusing. 2/5

11. Traumwandler by Sabine Giebken
    [LT: Dream Walker]

    I really enjoyed this one. I liked the circus/show aspect of the story and wished it would have had an even greater part. 4/5

12. Fellow: Freundschaft auf Probe by Sabine Giebken
    [LT: Fellow: Friendship on Trial]

    I hate hate hate when the protagonist is an annoying bitch as soon as she gets her horse and never listens to any advice because she thinks she’s little Miss Horse Whisperer. I really liked the ending, though. The animal sanctuary plot line was really nice. 2/5

Stats

Including pages of books I haven’t finished yet.

Newbies

Okay, so in June, I really made up for my crazy crazy May haul. I only got three books. So maybe I should thank that unfriendly seller that made sure I wasn’t going to end up with a ton.

1. An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1) by Sabaa Tahir
   [dt. Die Herrschaft der Masken (Elias & Laia, #1)]

   Sort of book swap with Bou. I heard a lot of mixed things about this book and since the blurb couldn’t convince me completely, I didn’t want to buy it new, so I was really lucky when Bou wanted to get rid of her copy.

2. Nachtland (Die Seiten der Welt, #2) by Kai Meyer
   [LT: Night Land (The Pages of the World, #2)]
   

   Lucky lucky lucky me won a signed copy of this one! I love it so much and it’s so pretty! It’s royal blue beneath the dustjacket, which is my favourite colour.

3. Die Elfen des Sees (Die Saga von Thale, #0.5) by Monika Felten
   [LT: The Faeries of the Lake (The Saga of Thale, #0.5)]
   

   This is the only book I ended up buying when I went out with SemaIV. For a moment, I wasn’t even sure whether I already own it or not. It’s just a novella to a series of which I read the first novel ages ago. I just wanted to wait till I have all the books. Now, I could marathon the whole series.

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