Ashleigh

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 …

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 …

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 …