Never change a running system, so like last year and the years before I’ll introduce a book to you that I came across on my bookshelves when I was browsing or some that I read this year and particularly saved for the x-mas Challenge. The first book I would like to introduce is

Alan Bennett’s „Leben wie andere Leute“ (A life like other’s people)

This one was a gift by my dear friend Barbara from Berlin (I’m waving hi to you) and I meant to read it on the plane to Dublin, but somehow ended up getting hooked into it way earlier but thought it would be the perfect book to kick off this years book-a-day challenge.

It begins fairly quiet. But Alan Bennett’s sentences are always pitch perfect. He captures the heartbreak of a pretty ordinary family amazingly perfect. It is a touching family memoir which portraits his parents‘ marriage and his childhood in Leeds, Christmases with his Grandma Peel, and the lives, loves and deaths of his unforgettable aunties Kathleen and Myra.

Bennett’s gripping story of his mother’s descent into depression and later dementia and the uncovering of a long-held tragic secret is at the same time heartrending and sometimes incredibly funny.

So trust me here and get yourself or for someone you love this poignant biograhy by one of Britains best-loved living writers.

Follow up this biography with Jeanette Wintersons’s heartbreaking „Why be happy, when you could be normal“ and Damian Barr’s autobiography of a working class upbringing in Glasgow called „Maggie and Me“

Ready for more? Then come back tomorrow when I open the second box.