Ever since I started blogging, it’s bugging me that I haven’t taken more pictures of my shelves over the years. I had so many different shelves and a million different arrangements since I feel like I’m reordering my books once a week to fit in all the new additions …

Ever since my first visit to Ireland in 2008, I’m obsessively in love with the country having returned multiple times. I just love everything about the Emerald Isle. A part of this fascination concerns the Irish language, Gaeilge. It is the first official language and therefore all street signs are written in Gaeilge (most of them have English ‘subtitles’) and many people have Gaelach names – and that’s a huge problem for a foreigner. Gaeilge just happens to be a language that is completely mental! Don’t get me wrong, I love it – how could I not, since my own name is Gaelach. But I just really don’t know what they were thinking when they decided on the spelling. It just makes no sense whatsoever. Don’t believe me? …

Creature of the Capitol – that’s not only the title of the bachelor thesis I’ve been writing these last couple of months, it’s exactly how I felt – a slave to the Capitol doing it’s bidding, writing, writing, … oh, have I mentioned writing already? No? Well, writing. 60 pages, if you want to know. Which you don’t because you’re probably sick and tired of my whining – at least if you follow me on Twitter. I really don’t know how my lovely ladies managed to cheer me on all the time. They were probably on their knees begging to let it be the 17th already while they tried to shut me up . . .

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 …