Kasie West

Late as always (but earlier than last year, ha! I’m getting better at this!): Looking back on the books I read in 2017 – the good, the bad, and the ugly (crying)!

The first week of September, I was off of work. Therefore, I expected to get a lot more reading done than I actually did in the end. Spending a lot of time at the stables really doesn’t help with reading, but it was nice to be able to ride every day for almost two weeks. […]

Just with the Wrap-Ups, my last Newbies post was way back in September 2015. In short, I’m still addicted to buying books, frantically amassing more and more and then some more. This year, however, I’m alternating between months in which I buy next to no books and months in which I buy all the books. I’m kind of challenging myself to go as long without buying books as I can, but when I reach that point I can no longer stand not getting books, it escalates very quickly. Who would have thought the yo-yo effect also affects book buying behaviour?! August was one of the former, which is why I only have four books to show you, each a different format …

Since I’m spending my holidays at my parents’ aka my private library, my friends had a considerable amount of books to choose from. The result is an eclectic mix of reads …

Umm … I think this got kind of out of hand. Well, compared to last year’s hauls, this is barely average, but I was doing so well. And then there came May, my good intentions vanished into thin air and I got more books than in the previous two months combined. In my defense … well, what can I say. It’s just the way I am – AND I had a lot of preorders AND I had to get the last PennyGirl books because the publisher was selling out AND I had a friend over who I just had to introduce to my favourite book shop in Munich …

I don’t mark my favourite parts in books. Instead, I either write down the page numbers or take pictures with my phone. Afterwards, I go back and copy the lines in my little black notebook. Currently, I’m a little behind on transferring but I’m trying to catch up. I love browsing through all of my favourite quotes from time to time. It’s like revisiting the books I’ve taken them from; their hearts and souls contained in a couple of sentences …

They divide books into delicious morsels ready to be devoured – and sometimes we decide to eat up the whole serving tray in one go resulting in a major hangover with the flavour of our huge disappointment that there’s nothing left. They help us remember where we left off – well, at least those people who have awesome memory. Everyone else lets the good old bookmarks do the remembering. They are wonderful excuses to procrastinate – “Just let me finish this.” – “Only one more.” – we’ve all been there. Sometimes, they make us tear out our hair because they leave off with a cliffhanger and we have to stop to do annoying real life stuff or have to read half the book to get back to this certain point of view – or even one and a half books, in case you’re reading A Song of Ice and Fire. They come in different sizes and even more shapes to look their very best.