The Season of Secret Wishes by Iva Prozchazkova is a pleasant but unexceptional children's book of the girl moves to new place and meets interesting people type; only made slightly more interesting by being set in Prague before the Iron Curtain fell.
A Christmas Visitor is a short mystery novel by Anne Perry, and I'm sure I would have found the ending very moving if I hadn't got bored with the plodding pace and poor characterisation and skipped to the last chapter halfway through. And I was pleased to see an ending where they really did think family and justice more important than status and money.
Dylan Thomas' poetry did not fail to enthrall however - well, some of his poetry, he can be a bit opaque. This is my favourite.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.
The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.
The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.
And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Dylan Thomas 1914 - 1953; The Season of Secret Wishes first published 1988, first translated into English 1989, Berlin Wall fell 9/11/1989; A Christmas Visitor first published 2004
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