Luxembourg book influencers share their passion on Instagram

Here, the Stephen Kings are piled up one after the other. Between Fitzek’s thrillers and the numerous books from Festa Editions, we regularly see Funko Pop figurines, small vinyl figurines of known fictional personalities, in Japanese style. There is no shortage of “Book Nooks”, decorative inserts for the library that represent scenes and places in miniature.

And if you look closely, you even discover a small collection of “The Sims” video games in the deep black library, in addition to hundreds of books and different manga series. As soon as you enter Lynn’s private library, you are catapulted into another world, like reading a book.

Lynn, known as Mido, now 30 years old, discovered her love for books as a child. “I have always read a lot, but when I was younger, I was never able to talk about it with anyone, to exchange ideas about books with others.” This had to change.

The pleasure of reading on an international scale

Today, this book lover manages with two friends, Christine and Romane, an Instagram channel where everything revolves around books and manga and everything related to them. Under “thethrillingreads”, the three Luxembourgers post short reviews more or less regularly, share their reading month – that is to say the books they read during a month – and exchange with their community about their favorite hobby : reading.

Their joint Bookstagram account has around 650 followers: a small community that continues to grow and in which everyone shares the same passion. The idea of ​​launching such a blog about books had been running through Lynn and Romane’s heads for a long time. In 2020, the time was right. A little over a year ago, Christine joined and expanded the gender diversity on the account.

Because this trained graphic designer is particularly attracted to Asian literature. So it’s no surprise that his favorite author is Banana Yoshimoto. While she reads mainly in English and Lynn prefers German, Romane also readily turns to French-speaking books.

However, Instagram posts are uniformly written in German. “At first the question was whether we were going to do all this in Luxembourgish or German,” says Lynn. The decision to write the short reviews and other posts in German has the advantage of being able to network with book influencers and readers beyond the borders of Luxembourg.

For the love of books

With their book blog, the three friends seek above all to have fun. Lynn, Romane and Christine work full time and therefore manage their account in parallel. And nowadays, everyone knows that a “simple” Instagram post takes a bit of time. Especially when you have to think about a motif and a text.

“For me, it’s especially the preparations for the photo that take the most time. You need an idea, the light must be good and everything must be perfect in the photo…” explains Romane. For Christine, it’s more the writing that she has a little difficulty managing. “How much can I say without spoiling? And how I can then sum it all up concisely, I sometimes rack my brain a little longer.”

On the other hand, video blogs are on a whole different level: they often take several hours to get perfect. There are certainly fewer videos of this type on “thethrillingreads”, but Lynn, Romane and Christine do not want to give it up completely. For example, video impressions of the Frankfurt Book Fair or a bookshopping excursion to Düsseldorf can be found on their account.

Young women’s passion for books and their worlds is not only evident on Instagram but also in the lively discussions they have with each other. And listening to Lynn, Romane and Christine, we say to ourselves that it must be pleasant to live and share one’s passion so openly.

100 books in a year

This is exactly the goal of their account: to encourage others to read, share their opinions on books and recommend works. “And then we hope that our followers will have as much fun reading these books as we do,” Lynn emphasizes. In doing so, a feeling of community is created between the most diverse book lovers: in this community, we feel understood, even if Bookstagram, as Romane points out, can sometimes be toxic.

Some book influencers speak badly of others and the pressure to read more and constantly post continually increases. Lynn, Romane and Christine are not stressed though. Of course, they set personal reading goals, such as reading at least 100 books in a year – a challenge that is child’s play for the three Luxembourgers. But these reading goals must be designed in such a way that the pleasure of reading remains intact.

While Luxembourg literature and books like those competing for example for the German Book Prize are not commented on by “thethrillingreads”, it is mainly genres like thriller, detective novel, horror, fantasy, romance, dark romance, new and young adult which are on the program.

Forget reality for a moment

“When I read, I need to distract myself and I would like to immerse myself in other worlds, to get away from reality. For me, it’s really about simply diving,” explains Romane. Simply wanting to disconnect while reading is something that many readers enjoy. And we don’t necessarily succeed, which is understandable, when we analyze for example Ingo Schulze’s “New Lives” or Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain”.

For book lovers like Lynn, Christine and Romane, however, it’s not just about reading. “Reading, buying and collecting books – these are still very different hobbies,” says Christine with a laugh. And tracking reading habits with apps like “GoodReads” and “Reado” is of course one of them.

Because if, like Christine, you have already read around 700 books, you can quickly lose sight of your library. Problems that probably only “bookworms” experience. But you can certainly never read too much.

This article was originally published on the Luxemburger Wort website. Adaptation: Lorène Paul.