I decided to gather up the books I’ve read this year and lay them out on our living room rug like a quilt. How beautiful it was to see the covers again (like meeting up with friends I haven’t seen in many weeks or months) and, in glimpsing each of them, remember the time I spent with each of them. The other day, I found more books I had read this past year and made another little quilt.
I will mention one of my favorite books, which I almost forgot to include in the newest book quilt because I had placed it in a special spot to re-read some chapters all over again. It is the first book in a trilogy that Natalie had already read by Judith Kerr. I am not going to say much because there is so much to say. Judith Kerr wrote the story many years after escaping Berlin in 1933, days before the election of Hitler (yes, Hitler was elected and so many people never believed he would be elected). She was a young girl living a ordinary girl’s life in Berlin. Her father was a writer who received a warning phone call a couple of weeks before the election from a police officer, who loved Judith’s father’s books, warning her father that he had seen her father’s name on a list of Berliners whose passports were to be taken if Hitler won the election. Fortunately, Judith’s father took the warning seriously. There are frightening moments, suspenseful moments, hilarious moments, loving moments, and sad moments — all imbued with such honest clarity. Read this book if you are 10 years old or older. You will set it down and want to read it again.
Pictured here is the British edition of the third book in the trilogy, A Small Person Far Away, which Natalie read this year and loved as much as the first two. Guess what I will be reading next? The second book in the trilogy: Bombs on Aunt Dainty. All three books are available in a packaged version with covers pictured below.
I will be writing about some of my other favorite books from 2020 in the coming weeks.