Monika Felten

June was a really mixed reading month. The first week was really hot so I fled my room and spend some wonderful reading hours at the Botanic Gardens. Sunshine, a soft wind, the chirping of birds and visits from curious squirrels – that’s what I consider peaceful quality reading time. For the rest of the month, however, I moved more or less into the library researching for my group presentation …

Who needs wrap-ups when one can have newbie posts, right? Riiiight? [The wrap-ups are coming. Winterish.] Truth be told, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of you are already pretty annoyed by my excessive purchase behaviour and these posts. I kind of feel like one of those BookTubers who have massive book hauls every (other) week or so, bragging about their new pretty books without ever reading them. I just realised that’s pretty much me – only I write monthly posts …

Yiiiihaaaa, I did it! For the first time this year, I managed to reach my goal of reducing my TBR pile by two books a month. However, that doesn’t mean that I suddenly became abstinent. Oh no, mind you, it was just another crazy month of getting way too many books. However, I also read a ton of books – probably more than I ever read before …

I didn’t buy as many books as I thought I would although I went to Munich and Berlin. First, I visited Ric in Munich where we went to a couple of bookshops and the library where I desperately tried to impose a couple of my favourite books on her but unfortunately, they weren’t in stock. Then, we travelled to Berlin where we teamed up with Miss Bookiverse for a bookshop tour she was so kind to organise for us. The highlight of our tour was Dussmann with its integrated English bookshop. Such a wonderful place! We loved it so much we went back for a second time, this time also accompanied by Captain Cow. It was really difficult not to buy half the shop and the others kept teasing me due to the immense pile of books I was carrying around. In the end, I somehow managed to really really pull myself together …