In addition to attempting to promote my soon to be published Ebook, Raiding Cúalinge, available from 20 April from all ebook retailers – and free for the first month if you get one of my freeby coupons – I thought I would mention some of the books I am currently reading – I often read several books ath the same time one in the living room, another beside my bed, another in the back room overlooking the garden, another in the … oops TMI there, you don’t need to know that.
OK, let me get my book junk out of the way right here here’s a link to it
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Serkeen
OK, enough said about that for the moment – although later I will maybe do a reading of a chapter, or include some photos of the locale where the story takes place, that sort of thing And of course I will provide my freeby book coupon later on – whenever I get a chance to work out how to do it.
Anyway, despite having said somewhere that I really like historical novels and so on, I still read fairly widely in a whole load of different areas.
I just finished a book called The Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols that I really enkoyed when I first read it more than, I think, 30 years ago. I think it has stood up pretty well to the tests of time – a wetback Latino (I hope that is not seen as an offensive term, I’m not 100% actually sure what it means other than a Mexican migrant into the US, but if it is racist, please let me know and I will apologise and withdraw it – farmer illegally irrigates his pathetic beanfield, thereby using water reserved for a high flying golf/dude ranch planned development for the area. Funny, great characters and an endless supply of them, a bit like one of those S.American novels or even, dare I say it, a Dickensian array of characters.
I followed that up with Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. I loved the movie with Alan Bates, Irene Papas and whatshisname – it’ll come to me in a minute. Anyway, what I think I really enjoyed then was the music by Theodorakis – I think that is the right spelling – and of course, Zorba’s dance. I remember actually buying a vinyl LP of the sound track I was so impressed with it.
That said, this time around, I was less than impressed with the book. Maybe I shouldn’t go back and reread stuff that I so much enjoyed when I read them 20, 30 40, 50 years and more ago (beginning to give my age away here, I suppose) but this time around there was something about the style and the dialogue between the two main characters, -the intellectual and the rough diamond, salt of the earth guy – ahh, played by Anthony Quinn in the movie – that just didn’t seem to ride easily. Bit of an effort to plough my way through it this time around, I have to admit although there were some great scenes zorba cursing and sneering at the old widow woman, yet still being drawn to her faded charms.
Incidentally, now that I think of it, I subconsciously stole a line from Zorba when I was writing Raiding Cúailnge but I won’t say what it was right nopw. Read the two books yourself and see if you can fine the one adapted line! Good luck to you.
Red Branch Chronicles 