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I'm German as well, began reading in English somewhere around 12 or so. Started with the Harry Potter books as well, I guess that's a common starting point :P
I've never been a fan of using a dictionary - Usually I would get the meaning from context, and if not, I mostly just read on without bothering. With a reader I guess that would've been different, but by now I very rarely need one.
I usually don't have any problems reading in English (The only book in the last few years giving me problems was Cloud Atlas - Though that was somewhat intended and would likely have been the same in German. At some point I want to read Ulysses though...wondering how that's going to work)
English books have several advantages to me:
While in school, they have been very useful for learning English...somewhat less now, but I still do pick up the occasional new word.
English books are distinctly cheaper than German ones - This is both for paper books and for ebooks, even more so for the latter ones (In Germany, Book Prices are fixed - I can get any English ebook without price fixing though - only some German ones).
On top of that, a lot of German books split volumes in translations, particularly in Fantasy - Wheel of Time has over 30 books in German - Book 6 and 7 were split into four books *each*). Obviously this makes them more expensive, and more of a hassle as well.
And obviously, a translation will always be inferior to the original text. Obviously if it's from a German author I'll read it in German, but only one of my preferred authors is German, the rest English, so that's not a big deal.
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