Laura

Throwback to two years ago – Sana came up with a really fun idea: starting 30 books in 30 days. With a currently reading pile of 20 books in the beginning of May, participating in this would be a really stupid move on my part, right? Well, who cares?! I didn’t want to let this silly game pass me, so I decided to tweak it a little: reading in 30 books in 30 days? That I could do, being both able to start some new ones and trying to finish ones that have been on my CRP for years. So this is how it went …

Yep, this one is super late even for these! However, since I didn’t have my blog, I didn’t feel like finishing and/or publishing it yet since no one besides me would be able to read it. It was kind of nice going through this, remembering the books I read not so long ago that feels like a different life time. So here are the tops and bottoms of 2018 …

October, November, and December – that’s my favourite quarter of the year, so I made a special list of autumnal and wintry titles for my friends to choose from. The resulting October reads: lost children, time travellers, an Irish princess, a girl that accompanied my teens, and Norse Gods …

Series – my personal doom. My problem is that I love to reread the previous books each time a new one comes out. You can imagine that this takes up an insane amount of time. Plus, I sometimes lose interest in continuing right when I’m done with rereading and could actually start the new book. Or instead of continuing with the next book, I start reading other stuff and don’t get back to it. Kind of tricky and it most certainly doesn’t help with finishing series. I’m working on changing something about it, so here are the series I really want to finish this year. I do already own all the books I need to read, so there’s really no excuse …

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.

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 …