Getting out and about isn’t the only way to survive a long grey German winter. I get just as much enjoyment out of hunkering down with my hoodie and fuzzy socks, putting on the kettle for another cup of tea/hot chocolate/hot vimto and diving into a good book. Yes, I’ll shout it from the rooftops I’m an unashamed bookworm, I love to read, learn, explore and live vicariously through the books which inspire my imagination.

MrC isn’t a book fan, he doesn’t understand the illicit love affair I have with books, and conversely I don’t understand how he can bear not to have one. After 15 years together though he knows that books are always a good present. His only problem is that I don’t only have them on bookshelves, but scattered around the house, in bags (for reading on the train), by the bed (bedtime reading) and on my desk (for blogging about), so it was no great surprise when he bought me a book I already owned, he always keeps receipts though, so I got to go book shopping.

These are my Christmas books, my sister recommended ‘The Rosie Project’ to me last year, she loved it, I’m not too sure that I will but I’m not discriminating about books by authors I haven’t read before, all writers get one chance with me. ‘The Circle’ has an awesome cover colour, it jumps out at you from the shelves, I hope that it lives up to it’s cover.

I picked up ‘A discovery of witches’ from a lovely independent bookshop in a tiny town in Bayern, they had three whole shelves of English books and I couldn’t not buy something or else they might stop stocking English books! and what would book deprived expats like me do? also it was on sale sooo. ‘The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ is the Christmas gift that I returned since I already had it, MrC doesn’t like to read but he has good taste, clearly. I picked up ‘The accident’ as I really enjoyed his first book ‘The expats’ and thought it might be worth a try, it isn’t a series just a new book.

OK, so you can probably guess what drew me to this book, the premise was too interesting to not read it. I hope that it lives up to it’s cover, because if its done badly, it will be a waste of a good opportunity.

I love adding some young adult fiction to my reading list, I probably couldn’t hack an adult horror book so this is generally as close to that genre as I’m comfortable getting. I’m halfway through the first and I would certainly recommend it (so far) to people who enjoy a good dark fantasy(ish) style.

Book challenges this year for me are reading and reviewing 30 books, have a book clear out, search out sources of second hand books locally (for donation and purchasing purposes) and finally join a bookclub (I loved my last bookclub so much and I’ve finally found one to join just need to get over that pesky final hurdle of actually attending!).

Sind Sie eine Leseratte? I really prefer bookworm, no-one wants to be called a rat!