Christmas Books - A Child's Story

There is no way I am going to be able to finish all of the stories in Christmas Books by Charles Dickens in time for Christmas so the best approach after having read the most famous one - Christmas Carol - is to pick off some of the other short stories in the book.

Dickens is great because although you pick up on the style and can work out where he is coming from and what comes next his writing is so good that you stick with it until the end.

Highlights from a Child's Story
* You follow a traveller as he goes through the woods and comes across a child that just wants to play, one that then wants to learn, a young man who wants to love, a family man that wants to raise a family and then an old man who looks back on it all and has the ability to remember each stage

* It is a short concise but very clever way of encapsulating the ageing process without it being all about leathery skin, failing sight and incontinence but more about the power of memory and the joy of looking back over a long life

More of the same sort of thing tomorrow...