2015

I’m kind of in a reading slump right now. It all started, because I’ve been procrastinating reading Quintana of Charyn throughout March. Still haven’t read it yet, because I’m so afraid of ALL THE FEELS. Instead of turning to other books, I just didn’t read at all. Furthermore, I’m going to move in a couple of days and preparations are taking up a lot of my free time and I’m just not in the mood for reading …

Joanna Campbell’s world of thoroughbred racing is one of my horse novel favourites. Both the Ashleigh [Aileen] as well as the Thoroughbred [Vollblut] series (and its specials) have a special place in my heart. They’re the reason I started working on my English skills: I was way to curious to wait till the German publisher translated the books, I just had to know what was going to happen. There was a great fan page back in the days with profiles of the horses, characters, authors and tonnes and tonnes of trivia (since the books were later on written by a rotating panel of authors, the mistakes, character transformations, et al. were numerous). I spent hours translating it all. I also became so mesmerised by the world of American thoroughbred racing that I wrote my A-level research paper on the Sport of the Kings. So far, I read all 15 Ashleigh novels, 1 of the 4 special editions and 38 of the 72 Thoroughbred novels, although I own considerably more …

Just to clarify: my Goodreads to-be-read shelf contains all the books I already own but haven’t read yet. I have separate to-buy lists for the books I’d like to read one day but don’t own yet. Since this topic’s not suggesting it’s about the books I recently bought, I’ll write about the books I recently shelved to-buy …

The first book I remember reading myself and actually enjoying was a horse novel I got for Christmas when I was 8 years old. Up until then, I had loved books and other people reading them to me, but I had hated reading myself. After said book, I couldn’t stop anymore. In recent years, my horse novel addiction had gone unnoticed. The only people who knew about it were a couple of Internet friends I haven’t been much in touch with and like-minded people on the PonyClub book club board. I was content and left in blissful peace. Then, I started to make new friends on Goodreads, which was also just fine – until I went on Twitter. Gone were the peaceful days in my horse novel paradise, replaced by constant mobbing and my silent tears …

When I was younger, my grandpa read lots and lots of books to me: Erich Kästner, Otfried Preußler, Wilhelm Busch, Janosch, Paul Maar (basically all German children’s classics except for Michael Ende – I’ve never read a single one of his books), and Astrid Lindgren. Although there’s one or two I’d enjoy reading again, I’ve forgotten all about them. Seriously, I just had to consult Goodreads to come up with a list of children’s books that were read to me. I’m sure I loved them all very much – after all, they made me fall in love with the written word, – but they just don’t feel like “my” books, because I never read them myself …

My first newbie post since May 2014. That’s probably a good thing since this means you didn’t really get to see how crazy I went last year. This year also started … well, it was my birthday in January, so what did you expect?! Since I’m lazy, I’m not going to talk about all the books I got in January but jump right into February …

I did it! I really did it! I finished all the books that I’d started back in 2014. I’m still not used to seeing only two to three books in my currently reading section on Goodreads. It’s so weird. I can’t even remember the last time I’d read no more than three books. It must have been at least over 18 months ago. Shocking since I used to read one book after the other when I was younger …