At the beginning of 2017, I still had several books to finish reading. It was an uphill struggle since I had picked books for learning more about history and not for entertainment. Some were really hard to stick with since the authors were not always writing in an easy style.

However, as every year, I will let you know which books filled more cavities in my brain:

1. I had to finish “The Kaiser, The Warlord of the Second Reich” by Allan Palmer. A tough read, especially since I had hardly learned anything about German history, growing up in the Eastern part of Germany, where Russian history post 1917 was all that was taught.
2. “Peter The Great” by Ian Grey was quite a lengthy book based on incredible research. I often had to go back to previous pages to ‘connect the dots.’ I admit that I got intrigued by the Russian history before the Revolution putting an end to the rule of the Tzars.
3. “The Girl with No Name” by Diney Costelloe. A story about the Kindertransports during WWII and how they fared in London during the bombings.
4. “On The Street Where You Live” by Mary Higgins Clark. This one not related to history. A mystery novel. Murders were repeated after 100 years.
5. “Prague Winter” by Nikolaus Martin. This one was very interesting because I had met the niece of the writer in an airplane. It is a heartwrenching story of the Nazi Invasion of Prague and how people coped with it.
6. “Love, Lies and High Heels” by Debby Conrad. It is a light, fluffy love story. It felt as if written by a teenager. Maybe I will read another book by Debby one day to see if she has ‘matured.’
7. “The Refugee” by Anna Bruic. The title speaks for itself. No, it does not have anything to do with the present day refugees.
8. “The Munich Girl” by Phyllis Edgerly-Ring. A love story of Adolf Hitler and a girl in Munich, their secret life and clandestine meetings and an unexpected end to it all.
9. “Lebensborn” by Roberta Kagan. I wanted to know more of the infamous ‘stud farms’ to breed Aryan babies. It wasn’t quite what I had expected.
10. “Refugee Road” by Nikki Landers, herself a prolific reader and writer. Part of a series of books.
11. “You Are My Sunshine” by Roberta Kagan. After reading “Lebensborn” by her, I wanted to know more. The story she weaves in this one feels not quite real. Unmarried girls, pregnant and with no home to go back to, find a place in one of the Nazi’s clinics, they have to sign a contract to give up their baby.
12. “Lucy’s Christmas Miracle” – One of many Frank Rozzany Detective short stories by Alex Mandossian. I have read more of this series and sometimes have held my breath.
13. “Threaten to Undo Us” by Rose Seiler-Scott is a well-researched account of families torn apart by the Nazi invasion of Poland and the tragic fare of German people living there.
14. “Personal Paparazzi” by Alina Vincent & Christine Whitmarsh. A book about writing, marketing and more. The two writers are very active on social media teaching courses.
15. “Never a Mistress, No Longer a Maid” by Maureen Discroll. After a lot of heavy reading, a person needs a break. I enjoyed this book.
16. “The Fall of The Dynasties: The collapse of the old order 1905 -1922” by Edmund Taylor. It was not new to me how the leading dynasties in the European part of the world were all related, and one could hardly understand how they could make war against each other. History, meticulously researched and well written.

Those are the books I read, most on my Kindle and Kobo. I also checked a lot of books on Amazon where you can click on “Look Inside” and get an idea what they are about. There was quite a number I would have loved to get and read, but as a writer, I only have so much time.  I had started to read two books over Christmas but did not finish either yet. Therefore I like to leave them to my report at the end of 2018. God willing I will still live at that time, and no new war has blown our planet to bits!

Now about the book, I published in 2017: A collection of my German language poems; poems I had written over a period of about thirty years. Happy poems! I had a lot of fun putting the book together while I took a ‘sabbatical’ from writing my sequel to “We Don’t Talk About That.” Written in the style of Eugen Roth’s poems, they inevitably bring a smile to the readers face. A terrific gift for all German-speaking friends.

“Ein Mensch von Gestern – Heute” is available on all the known Amazon sites, Kindle, Kobo, Smashwords. Wonderful as a paperback but also available as an ebook.