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Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya
Speaking Spanish like a Native by Brad Kim and Erika Dominguez
Here's a rather unusual approach to learning Spanish. It's not intended for beginners but rather for people who have already spent some time studying the language and want to go further, especially in the direction of becoming more adept at conversation. What Brad Kim has done here is to give us a collection of everyday expressions, exactly like the expressions we use when we speak English, which will enhance conversational skills. Start using a few and you'll sound more down-to-earth and impressive to your listeners.
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The Dark Side of the Dream by Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez
The story begins in 1941, at the time America went to war with Japan and Germany. It concerns the Salazar family, poor farmers in Chihuahua. The grandfather, Sebastian, knows he is dying and he advises the family to move to the United States. He reasons that because of the war the Americans will want lots of people to work in their country as their men go off to fight. Their farm is a ruin. Only expensive fertilizer could bring it back to life. And they don't have any money.
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Travel Advisory: Stories of Mexico by David Lida
Lida's writing and his choice of material cast a powerful spell.
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Only Once in a Lifetime by Alejandro Grattan
Here's a story that takes in a complete life, from childhood well into adulthood, and from rags to riches. It's a story that is of interest to we residents in the Lake Chapala area as it starts out in Ajijic and covers a fair number of years there - or should I say here. On page one we encounter ten-year-old Francisco Obregón, a homeless barefoot orphan outside the Old Posada on the Ajijic waterfront. It's 1940 and Francisco is hustling for odd jobs and tips. It's the only way he can manage to survive.
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The Insider's Guide: Mexico's Lake Chapala and Ajijic
I'm filled with admiration and respect for The Insider's Guide. Its 368 pages are so complete and comprehensive and so well thought out and so well organized. Teresa Kendrick and her colleagues have done a wonderful job of providing and packaging a full authoritative range of information, not only for long and short-term residents of the Lake Chapala area but also for those many people who seem to be contemplating coming here either to live as permanent retiree-residents or as snowbirds.
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Mexico Magic by Dru Pearson
.Dru Pearson begins her account of her first four seasons in Ajijic starting in the summer of 2000 when she loaded or, rather, overloaded her VW van with as many belongings as it would hold, and she and her dog, Bailey, drove (slowly, she emphasizes) to Laredo. However, before she even reached the U.S./ Mexico border, the vehicle broke down and she found herself by the roadside in 110 degree temperatures, unloading twelve boxes of belongings, plus a TV, a computer complete with monitor and printer and other sundry items. However, a mechanic answered her call and the car was repaired and she made it across the border at Laredo, starting the 750 mile stretch to Ajijic on the shores of Lake Chapala.
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Breaking Even by Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez
"What Val saw as his long period of involuntary servitude was about to come to an end. In the prison movie parlance he liked to affect, he had done his 'hard time.' He had finally reached his eighteenth birthday, and Texas law entitled him to make his own decisions now." The time is 1955. Val has just graduated from high school - although barely. He's finally free to escape the tiny Texas town of Big Bend, which he detests, and go off to California. Val's mother, Guadalupe, is Mexican and his father, who has long since flown the coop, is Anglo, which at least makes Val part Mexican.
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Brain Surgeon by William Wallace and Memoirs of the Future by Eduard Prugovecki
This month's column is a little bit different as I'm not reviewing one particular book on or about Mexico. Rather, I'd like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to some local writers here in the Guadalajara/Lake Chapala area. I recently had the experience of reading and enjoying four books, all within a very brief time span, and then realized that all four were written by local writers.
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The New Oxford Spanish Picture Dictionary by E. C. Parnwell
The Dictionary is based on a rather neat and simple idea to help us learn new words in Spanish and for providing us with the names of hundreds of everyday products and articles.
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A Mexican Odyssey: Escape to Paradise by William Reed with Sylvia Garces de Reed
William Reed tells us his own personal story and what a tale it is. Most of the action takes place in Puerto Vallarta where Reed has lived since his move to the beach in '72. He seems to have met everyone who ever went there - including some very well-known ones, such as actor Richard and Elizabeth Burton, Peter O'Toole, Xaviera Hollander and many, many others. Two people who figure most prominently in the story are movie director John Huston and Johnny Weissmueller (Tarzan himself). In the struggle for Huston's affections, William Reed was the loser. It all adds up to quite a story.
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Live Better South of the Border by 'Mexico Mike' Nelson
I’d love to have had this book five years ago when we first came to live in Mexico. It’s not that we ran into a string of problems then but it’s just such a useful source of information and opinion about living here it would have cut a lot of corners for us at the time. As the author says, this book is written for people of all ages who want to live in Mexico and Central America, from retirees to baby-boomers who want a new life to artists and writers who want a stimulating and less expensive way of life.
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Village in the Sun by Dane Chandos
I reviewed Chandos's other book, "House in the Sun", in Mexico Connect a couple of months ago and now I'm catching up on what was actually the author's first book, published four years earlier. We're given a good long loving look at the various events that mark a typical year in a Mexican village - like The Day of the Dead, the Day of the Cross, Navidad, birthdays and the other festivals that are customarily celebrated. It all adds up to an attractive narrative.
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Inside Mexico: Living, Travelling and Doing Business in a Changing Society by Paula Heusinkveld
This is a very useful book for explaining Mexicans to the rest of us North Americans. Professor Heusinkveld has set out to cover Mexican attitudes to business relationships, social interactions, culture, customs and values and has largely succeeded in describing our neighbors in understandable ways. I would like to have read "Inside Mexico" four years ago when we first came here to live. However, perhaps it's only now, after four years' experience in the country, that I can really appreciate the people.
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Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr
This is a novel about Richard and Sara Everton, a couple of Americans who choose to leave San Francisco and live in a small, remote Mexican village. Their purpose is to reopen a copper mine that was abandoned by Richard's grandfather fifty years ago in the Revolution of 1910. The novel depicts their arrival and their integration into Ibarra.
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The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
This, like its predecessor, All The Pretty Horses, is another coming-of-age story involving a young American in the border country between Mexico and New Mexico in the 1930s. Billy Parham is sixteen years old when he traps a wolf in New Mexico and decides to take the injured animal back across the border to its home. It’s an interesting journey.
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Midlife Mavericks - Women Reinventing their Lives in Mexico by Karen Blue
Here's an interesting collection of stories of nineteen women who came on their own to Mexico in recent years to settle in the Lake Chapala area. The book consists of eighteen interviews plus the story of the author herself. The women range in age from their 40's to their 80's. Their backgrounds and experiences and approaches to life are as varied as you can imagine.
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Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge by Joel Simon
There's no good news in Joel Simon's book. It's a catalog of the awful things that have happened in Mexico since the time of the Conquest.
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True Tales from Another Mexico by Sam Quinones
An odd mixture of very positive descriptions of the country along with some appalling examples of what can happen south of the border.
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The Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle
This isn't a book about Mexico. Rather, it's about Mexicans in California right now.
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Live Well in Mexico by Ken Luboff
What Luboff has set out here is all the basic information one needs on a host of topics relevant to moving to Mexico. You'll find details on acquiring residency documents, whether or not to buy or rent a house, working in Mexico, how to bring your car here, how to move your furniture here and so on. You’ll also find hints and tips on staying healthy, dining out, hiring help, what to bring on your first trip, road safety, the best ways to get from one place to another and much, much more. Indeed, there is hardly a page that doesn’t have some useful hint or tip on living here successfully.
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Mexico Magico: Everything You Wanted to Know by German Estrada Navarro
This is a well-organized and clearly presented compilation of data about this country that any newcomers - and some old-timers, too - could use.
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House in the Sun by Dane Chandos
As the legend goes, Dane Chandos came to Ajijic and made his house into an Inn and, in the process, met a mixed bag of people who also visited the place, which the author describes as "nestling between the lake and the paws of the mountains." There's a full-blooded Mexican Army general and an interesting French countess who arrives alone, wearing a mink stole who makes extravagant demands on the establishment. And there's a pedantic German professor who feels compelled to explain everything he encounters in scientific terms….and many many others.
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A House Far South in Mexico by Elaine Dandh
This is a reminiscence by Ms. Dandh about how she and her husband, Ken, retired and left their home in Massachusets and came and settled in Guadalajara. It's a month-by-month account of their first year of living in Mexico, getting to know the people and the place.
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The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes
The book consists of nine short narratives - stories, if you like - each one occurring in the hazy borderline between Mexico and America - what Fuentes chooses to call the crystal frontier.
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