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Jane Eyre starts with a scene when the girl Jane Eyre has managed to retreat behind a curtain with a book, she reads the pictures of arctic landscapes. Jane Eyre was the first book I read in the original English, before I read in pictures and in German. Collecting the books I read in "my books" was very much a self reflection on books that shaped me, books that left an impression with me.

How do we find to reading? I grew up in a house full of books, full of contemporary books in German. My first books are books which were given to me by my parents, and read to me by my mother. First additions from outside came via TV programmes. When I turned 9 we moved from the village to a town, next to the main library and with three bookshops. I spent the following three years a lot of time in the library and in one bookshop. Another source was the huge fleamarket in summer, full of cheap books. Buying and exploring books became a source of intense joy.

Looking at my bookshelf I found a few patterns: very early there were authors I wanted to read everything what they have written, sometimes only following one series. When I had finished all there was to find from Astrid Lindgren, Micheal Ende, Otfried Preußler, Erich Kästner, Max Kruse I was electrified if something new appeared. This brought disappointments: Max Kruse changed his Style; Astrid Lindgren became to old; Micheal Ende becamee strangely esoteric; and relevations: Otfried Preußler and especially Erich Kästner wrote books for adults, completly different from children literature. Enid Blyton wrote to much, and it was repetitive. I didn´t include one of the many books I read in goodbooks. C.S. Lewis and Joan Aiken appeared in single unrelated translations, that slowly evolved into connected stories.

And there were themes: dinosaurs, stone age, classics, finding and reading all I could get hold of. Being frustrated and irritated with different views. And the detection of Third Reich. The first book I found independent of my parents was "Mond, Mond, Mond" a travelling saga about two romnya girls being left behind, when their family is being arrested in post war West Germany, in their travels with the refound old alcoholic uncle and his lame horse, they learn about the horrors, that killed a large part of the family before the war. I knew there had been a war, my grandfather and my uncles had been soldiers, one had died. But I only learned about third reich vom 1980, with the TV adaption of "When Hitler stole Pink Rabbit" and other childrens books, especially by Christine Nöstlinger. The horrors being presented very differently every time.

From 13 years on I read mostly adult literature: everything from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, later everything from Heinrich Böll. Siegfried Freud, James Joyce, Virginia Woolfe. Christa Wolf and Georgette Heyer became life long soothing companions. With my activity in Fair Trade grew my interest in literatures beyond Europe. Reading in English increased the access to authors from the global south immensly.

From 1990 when I was in Britain an ever increasing part of my reading was done in English. Including some French, Russian and Polish, as I picked up those languages. Also I was busy with real life and real persons speaking English, French, Russian, Polish and many more languages, so my reading dropped, and only picked up in 2019 when both children left my house, and now I am on a personal all time high.