Prague anyone?

Time's Magpie: A Walk in Prague is Myla Goldberg's mini verbal snapshot of the city after the Velvet Revolution. Goldberg, who wrote the novel Bee Season, lived in Prague in 1993, just as the Czechs were starting to westernize. She goes back in 2003 to see what has changed.

Prague, she writes " is time's magpie, hoarding beautiful eclectic bits from each successive era." Her descriptions of the architecture alone sound wonderful - a blending of Barouqe, Renaissance, Art Nouveau and Communism. She mentions the floods of 2002, and what work remains to be done on the city.

This is a small book and she just touches on various areas of the city: the squares and plazas where there have been protests against the Iraq war, the Communists and at one time the Nazis, and the cemeteries where the famous are honored, and the Jewish cemeteries where the dead are forgotten where "headstones that are largely blank await additions that will never come." Her book leaves you wanting to learn more about such a historical city and the yearn to see it for yourself.

This book is part of the Crown Journeys travel series which has well-known authors, take you to their home towns (like Kinky Friedman writing about Austin) or their adopted home towns (Alex Kotlowitz on Chicago) or places they have been. Read and learn. Travel and grow.