Portugal Books

Birding in Europe? Why travel across a continent when many of the European species migrate through a tiny corner of Andalucía twice each year, Consider ordering this excellent site guide to the southern coast of Spain. The Gibralter Migres is irresistible to birders. Using this book as your primary birding site guide, a birder might theoretically be able to find up to 200 European and African species in a week without traveling more than about 70 miles from the Jerez airport.

From Southern Spain (Tarifa)you can see the rugged Atlas Mountains in Africa about nine miles across the Strait of Gibralter. The 40 minute ferry to Tangiers offers an opportunity for African birding. This ferry to also offers two short pelagic trips across the Strait of Gibralter. Tens of thousands of pelagic birds seasonally transit this area, in and out of the Mediterranean. Pelagic species are also commonly observed from strategic points (like the Tarifa seawall and Trafalger) that are described in this book. I only wish that this book also covered nearby Morocco.

Note that there are both a 2001 and a 2004 edition on the market, I have not seen the newer edition.

Sorry, my friend. This is not a guide to the wild side of post-Franco Spain. You'll find that easily enough just by staying on the streets of Salamanca or Seville past midnight. For Spanish university students, the weekend begins on Thursday.

Despite 2500 years of severe ecological degradation, Spain retains some areas of almost pristine emptiness, chiefly in the mountains. I hesitate to apply the term wilderness to anything in Spain, since everywhere has been impacted by humanity, and only places useless to mankind have remained "wild." In Spain, desolation offers isolation. Nowhere in the world is the impact of human overexploitation of resources so obvious as in Spain. The Romans treated Spain as short-sightedly as the Americans are treating California. West of Leon, for example, there's an area of "beautiful" red-rock hoodoos reminiscent of the American Southwest; the erosion, however, is not natural but rather the result of hydraulic gold mining by the Romans 2000 years ago. The landscape hasn't yet begun to heal. Most of Spain was forested when the Romans arrived. It was said that a squirrel could caper from Lisbon to Barcelona through the trees without ever touching the ground. Today Spain is chiefly arid and treeless. Spain is visible proof that mankind CAN impact climate and ecology both profoundly and permanently.

Neverthless, there are places in Spain that will delight "walkers, amateur naturalists, lovers of the wild, and travelers of all kinds," as the author of Wild Spain declares. The book offers well-written descriptions of dozens of such beauty spots, along with convincing photos and suggestive maps. Notes about the animal species that have survived man's onslaught are interesting, though one's likelihood of seeing an ibex is close to minus 10. Birds are a better story. Spain is the natural corridor for birds migrating from Europe to Africa; storks are common, flamingos and spoonbills are regular visitors, hoopoes hop from housetop to housetop. A visit to a Spanish market in the winter will surprise most Americans with the variety of wild game for sale - hares, boar, deer, partridges and grouse and other birds. This wild game doesn't come to market from the "wild" corners of the peninsula. Most of it comes from the "dehesa" - the seemingly uncultivated acres and acres of cork trees, curiously spaced apart. The "dehesa" is a human artifact, and a stunning example of sustainable agriculture; the cork oaks provide acorn fodder for the semi-wild swine that will eventually become serrano ham, as well as environment for smaller animals and birds that are hunted for sale in the markets. The cork is of course a valuable product also, but an endangered one. As synthetic corks and screw-tops snatch a share of the wine bottle business, the economic viability of the "dehesa" becomes threatened. Think of that next time you buy wine!

Readers should be warned that hiking trails are often hard to find and even harder to follow in Spain, with the exception of the pilgrimage routes, which are not usually "wild" and thus not listed in this book. If your primary interest is in hiking as such, France offers a good deal more incentive, with spectacular thoroughly-marked national trails criss-crossing the whole nation. The primary use of this book will NOT be for eco-tourists, but for long-term residents in Spain, students taking a year abroad in Spain, and even for Spaniards who can read English, since there's no book of comparable merit available in Spanish.

I like wine-hunting. Visiting wineries, talk to farmers, taste (very little, I have to drive) and buy. For good wine-hunting you need a good guide. A guide that tells you where to find the good and not too expensive wines. In France there are excellent guides (in French). Wine hunting in Spain is more difficult than in France so a good guide is even more important. For Spain 'The Wine Roads of Spain' proved to be excellent. It offers a limited number of high quality bodegas with adresses and telephone numbers. Also a lot of text about the region so you can prepare your hunt. I hunted in Ribera del Duero (watch this region!) and Navarra. Spended my last pesetas on a Pesquera Tinto Grand Reserva 1992. Came home with 200 bottles of great wine. Recommended !

Zapata's Disciple is a collection of short essays and poetry by Martin Espada, whom I consider the greatest Latino poet writing today. His poetry is insightful, politically unrelenting; anger tempered with the love that only one so connected to his roots and community can articulate. Espada's tribute to Mumia will move you to tears. His images are powerful and his message is the most relevant writing of our times. A must for your library.

George Borrow was the author of the more well known "auto-biographical" duet of Lavengro & The Romany Rye. The Zincali recounts his adventures in Spain, especially as concerns The Rom (aka Gypsies) whom he loved and was loved by in return. George, you see, was the Romany Rye ~ the non-gypsy Gypsy. I hope this new edition garners a wide audience, and would like to recommend it to anyone interested in Mr Borrow and his delightful storytelling. "3 Cheers!"

My boyfriend and read it toghether and i got addicted to it since page 1! what a book!
Its very funny, cause the characters are one of a kind, it is interesting because it reflects the Russian society, it is deep because you also get both of these features related to yes...Pontius Pilates and Christ! and it is easy to read, has many many helpful comments at the end so you dont get lost in history!
This is a must for everyone

About midway through this book, I decided it could easily be turned into a screenplay for another run-of-the-mill slasher movie. Maybe the best is yet to come, but I resent having read so far waiting for something better.

Over the years I've heard numerous people call "The Master and Margarita" their favorite book, so finally I decided to read it for myself and was not disappointed at all. Yet, despite my enjoyment of this book, I am at a loose for how best to describe or critique it. I could perhaps say (and I mean this as a compliment) this is the literary equivalent of an old and unsafe ride at a traveling carnival - that is, you're never sure what's going to happen next, so all you can do is hold on tight and enjoy the ride. Bulgakov's work is a terrific, mind-bending mixture of dark humor, satire, surrealism, romance, horror, fantasy and social commentary. Of course, while this work skewers many of the problems which faced the early Soviet Union, you don't need to be enrolled in a seminar course on Stalinist Russia to appreciate this unique and absorbing tale of good and evil (although the introduction and notes by Richard Pevear are very useful for the non-academic reader). Approach this novel with an open mind and you will love it!

I found Mikhail Bulgakov's life terribly sad, as I progressed through this novel, realizing how much of it is autobiographical. Here was a brilliant man---the grandson of Priests, who was obviously quite theologically challenged in atheist Russia. His motif surrounding the existence of Jesus and the Devil, told through stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, was obviously his personal desire to master the concept of good versus evil, in a culture of oppression, brutality, and subjugation, not to mention censorship---the slow death of a creative, freedom-seeking, artist.

A good deal of the read may appear to just be magical folly but on careful inspection, it is filled with deep, political satire and symbolism attacking Stalin's Communist Russia and the justifiable paranoia it bred. The ridicule, denouncement and exposure was nothing short of genius, as were the characters that carried out his themes, my favorite being the personification of the big as a pig, Vodka craving, Black Cat.

Bulgakov, was clearly before his time and it is sad he died at 48. His history shows a man who was broken by his inability of free expression. His determination to complete his works, in spite of censorship, is a testament to his spirit and perseverance---one of the strongest reasons that this book deserves to be read by all. I consider it a literary gift from the grave, carrying messages we must never forget.

Be warned that this is not a quick and easy read---at least it was not for me. I suspect that I've missed, or misinterpreted many scenarios that will read differently with a repeat read. Simply put, it's like trying to watch a ten ring circus---in more ways than one. But, you won't want to miss a single ring of action.

There is little I can add to the many excellent reviews of this unique novel; it repays re-reading and study.

Professor Kevin Moss at Middlebury College maintains an excellent site dedicated to this novel. There are illustrations from various editions, maps of places and a guide to the characters. Professor Moss describes the site:

"These Master & Margarita pages are intended as a web-based multimedia annotation to Bulgakov's novel.

"You won't find the full text of the novel here, as it is still under copyright and no one in his right mind would want to read a 300-page novel online in any language. Curling up with the novel, preferably in a basement apartment in front of a fire on a moonlit night, is highly recommended.

"You won't find a summary of the novel here either, and it's unlikely the site will make much sense as a whole if you don't read the novel. You can't use this site like Cliff's Notes."

Amazon doesn't permit direct links, but you should be able to find this outstanding reader's aid by going to middlebury.edu on Google and searching on Bulgakov in the Middlebury search box.

Robert C. Ross 2008

I was afraid this book would lack detail since it depicted events 500 years ago, but there was a passenger who, fortunately, became a primary source, and kept the narrative interesting. The opening scene of the book, with the ghostly ship arriving back in Spain, grabs the reader's attention, then there is a long discussion of Magellan's efforts to get the expedition funded and underway. After wading through this moderately interesting segment, the story really picks up once the armada sails. From then on, I was totally hooked and couldn't wait to see what would happen next. I highly recommend this book. It is not a dry tome, as I suspected at first, but a highly readable account of one of the most amazing voyages of all time.

A truly terrifying and detailed eyewitness account of Magellan's voyage westward around the world by sea. It is not hard to get sucked in by Magellan's political persistence, and his entire crew's efforts at survival as they stepped off land they knew to a waterworld larger, deeper, and yet more inhabited than anyone knew. No modern reader can understand what it meant in the 16th century to board a ship to a world where entire continents and oceans were unknown, and longitude was uncalculatable. It was far more daring than the oft-compared space travel, where all the "heavenly" bodies are well-known, and location is calculated down to the last centimeter. At the same time, I found the story equally frightening for describing what still exists in large measure: leaders of countries competing brutally for money, luxury, and indulgences, exploiting the bravery and suffering of loyal common men, poisoning the natural curiosity between cultures. And through it all, women figuring prominently ... as sexual chattel. What we now know is that the world is round, most of it navigable waters. But the lands are populated with scientifically advanced savages. Magellan's story may not make you seasick, but it will surely make you dizzy.

This is a fascinating read, full of details (politics of the time, how ships operate, torture, sexual mores of various tribes around the world, etc.). The story of the first voyage around the world is so amazingly dramatic one would say "too far fetched" if it were fiction. Every page is so rich with detail that you want to just slow down as you read. The only slight flaw is that the characters do not come quite as alive as I would have liked. But everything else about this book is so good, it's well worth reading.

this is one of the most exciting adventure/discovery books i've ever read. it was a page-turner from beginning to end.

I'm on an explorer kick these days, so I've read a lot of bios of them. (Check my list, "Books About Explorers," for more recommendations.) This is (narrowly) my favorite of the lot. Bergreen's a terrific writer, and Magellan's voyage never lacked for drama. It's carefully researched and fun to read.

944-page two-part near-classic is undone by its weak ending, but still stands as a masterpiece of literature. Considered a "first novel", DQ plays on themes of meaning, faith, and madness with great humor.

Cervantes wrote the book in two parts separated by a five-year hiatus (1605 and 1610) during which another author wrote a poorly-received second part, which Cervantes attacks repeatedly in his own followup.

As long as it is, the translation while "unabridged" does not translate all of the original Spanish. Part of the Oxford World's Classics" series, this translation is the famous Jarvis translation from 1742, which was long considered the classic translation. While modern language scholarship has revealed its inexactness, the Oxford version uses it because it best captures the feel if not the word-for-word meaning of the translation, and end notes identify where Jarvis has veered from the original to maintain rhymes, jokes, and puns.

I love the story but have never been able to finish the book. I listened to this on a road trip to California and found it very enjoyable. They did cut a major section, but I guess that is what you contend with in an abridged version.

'Don Quixote' is largely considered to be a satire on the popular chivalric ballads of Cervantes' day, but don't be fooled. This novel is no satire on chivalry, itself. Indeed, through the trials of Quixote and Sancho Panza, Cervantes is perhaps the greatest promoter of chivalric ideas that the West has ever known. No other protagonist so thoroughly embodies the ideals of heroism, romantic love, friendship, honor, discretion, trust, virtue, and adventure than does Don Quixote. It just so happens that he is insane, but the author is able to look beyond that. So too should the reader.

The knight's sallies are absolutely delightful and, it must be credited, alone prove Cervantes' genius in writing. The dialogue between Quixote and Sancho is excellent comedy, creating a duo that has gone unsurpassed in originality and endearment for five centuries. "Is it possible that Your Worship can be so thick skulled and brainless as to not perceive the truth of what I allege?" Classic.

But these adventures, hilarious as they may be, give us frame for a storehouse chivalric truisms, the like of which can be found in no other work of fiction. A sampling would include: "An author had better be applauded by the few that are wise than laughed at by the many that are foolish;" "Anyone who has been a good squire will never be a bad governor;" "There is a wide difference between flying and retreating; valor which is not founded on the base of discretion is termed temerity or rashness;" and "Whenever virtue shines in an emanant degree, she always meets with persecution."

The reader cannot help but to love such regal assuredness, such profound idealism. Ironically, Quixote's insanity never really contradicts his optimism and in fact vindicates it. It is commentary on the human condition that only the insane person can actually accomplish something virtuous. And after all the delusions are expired and all the fallacies uncovered, Don Quixote actually has accomplished everything he set out to achieve if only because he was noble enough to strive for it.

A note must be made on the translations. While much of the verbiage is straightforward, there are several repeated phrases that are different between the major translations, Quixote's moniker being one of the most important. In every translation I have seen, the name has been different--"The Knight of the Rueful Countenance," "The Knight of the Mournful Countenance," and "The Knight of the Sorrowful Face" are all used for the same phrase. I enjoyed the "Rueful Countenance" and found it to be well-suited for the style of the novel though I have not read other translations.

In the end, though, you cannot go wrong. 'Don Quixote' is a pure joy to read and we are fortunate to have the ability to do so.

Don Quixote well deserves its place in the pantheon of world classics. For me, it's the ultimate desert island book. It is simply an indescribable jewel, full of fun, hilarity, adventure, beauty, wisdom, social commentary, tragedy, and entertainment. And I believe that J.M. Cohen's translation is the best there is. He obviously had a love for the material and left us a beautifully rendered work. The encomium in his Times obituary was on the mark when it said that he was "the translator of foreign prose classics for our times."

The translation is perfect except, as the translator has noted, on the poems found through out the book. The book itself is just plain beautiful, the author, Cervantes, is a master of prose and creativity, not to mention he has a great sense of humor. In my opinion, he is not too far off from Shakespeare. A+

My mother spent a frightful childhood in revolutionary Barcelona near the cathedral "Sagrada Famila"...FAI territory. Orwell's account is extremely close to what my mother recounts. A horrible period of history...the precursor to WWII.

Orwell did not let ideology hamper his account of the facts.

My mother's family were secret members of the Flange who issued false Costa Rican passports. They took one of the french refugee ships mentioned in the book just ahead of the Communist police! The real tragedy of the civil war was the defeat of the center...as in Germany, the loonies prevailed. Orwell was honest about the spanish dilemma.

Homage to Catalonia is Orwell at the zenith of his journalistic style--brutally candid in its description of the battlefield and the politics of the Spanish Civil War in which he participated as a volunteer foot soldier against the military insurgency. The Civil War was, of course, a prelude to WWII and while this is clearly adumbrated in Orwell's vivd descriptions of the antagonists, he could not have anticipated the future conflagration. It is a "must read" not only for those interested in the politics of the conflict but also for anyone desiring a candid insight into the plight of the combatants.

he's realy got an amazing way of turning a phrase. if you are at all interested in the Spanish Civil War this book is a great introduction.

"Homage to Catalonia" has long passed from the shelf for current events to the shelf of primary historical sources. No one can study the Spanish Civil War without encountering it. On that basis, it's a five-star book; all primary sources should get five stars. As a reading experience, it's not without weaknesses, which the earlier review by H. Schneider examines cogently. I refer you to that review.

Today's newspapers (7-11-08) carried extended obituaries for David Smith, who died in Berkeley, CA, at age 95. Mr. Smith was one of the only 30-some veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the volunteer contingent of Americans who joined the republican cause in Spain to stop fascism before World War II. The defeat of the republican forces, due at least partly to their own turmoils as described by Orwell, allowed the dictator Franco to suppress the 20th Century in Spain until his welcome death in 1975. David Smith was wounded in Spain in 1938. He returned to America, settled in New York, and married Sophie Kaplan, a marriage that lasted 59 years. Smith worked as a machinist, a union organizer, and for 18 years as a public school biology teacher in New Rochelle, where he campaigned for school integration.
David Smith and his wife were active Communist Party members in the 1940s and 1950s, but left the party in disillusionment in the early 1960s. He was one of the victims of blacklisting in the McCarthy era. He retired to Vermont in 1977, and then to California two decades later. During his long retirement, Smith was a dedicated campaigner for peace, a familiar personage at anti-war demonstrations, and an active raiser of relief funds for Central American countries hit by civil strife.

I knew David Smith reasonably well. He was a man of sincerity and integrity; I doubt that he ever did anything in his life that failed to meet his standards of conscientious humanity. He meant to do well, and he did what he believed was right. His support for the welfare of working people and for oppressed people everywhere was unwavering. He had no lust for power or fame. Like several other grass-root American Communists I've known, he was above all a decent guy. That he was naive about Stalinist Russia is clear; that he wasn't always right about his positions seems clear also, but who is? But to portray such a person as a menace to free society, an unscrupulous plotter, a pawn in the game of Kremlin masterminds is libel and foolishness, and a self-deception honorable people in America cannot afford.

After re-reading Catalonia, some 20 years after my first encounter, I am disappointed. I do not think that this is Orwell's best work. It has many of his strengths, mainly the elegant, efficient and straightforward prose that he developed so impressively, but there are some flaws. Main flaw in my view is the fact that the main political theme has become dead and irrelevant. Stalin died some decades ago, the Soviet Empire collapsed, we don't need to dig in the little details of their abominable strategies any longer. Of course we can't blame Orwell for the fact that his concerns are not ours any more. But it shows that the book was not timeless in the sense of surviving its immediate subject, as his other non-fiction did.
Second main weakness of the book: the narration of the Barcelona street fighting and the attempts at understanding them are rather boring.
On the strong side: the tales from the Aragon front are much more interesting. Orwell saw less fighting than he was keen to experience, but he describes the trench routine with the same livelyness that he brought to Wigan coalmines and Paris restaurants previously.
He did see enough fighting to get dangerously injured. People said to him that few men survive a shot through the neck, so he was lucky. He thinks he would have been luckier if he had not been shot at all.
Orwell published the book a few months after his adventure, and before the Spanish Civil War was over. Surprisingly the book was a commercial failure then, and equally surprisingly it has later been named as one of the best non-fiction books of the century.
Why was it ignored in the early time? Possibly because he told the world things that the world didn't want to know. He busted the myth that there was a confrontation of the good and the bad in Spain, that democracy fought fashism. Orwell shows us that there were at least 3 camps, not 2. The most vicious fighting that he experienced was among the 'good guys'. The government side was influenced strongly by the communist party who had secured the support from Russia. Since no other country provided weapons to the government side, that secured a lot of mileage.
Orwell was a hopeless romantic, who loved the feeling of working class rule that he got when he first arrived in Barcelona. That must be the reason for the otherwise incomprehensible book title. That basically socialist attitude must also have put quite a few potential readers off at the time of publication.
Orwell later saw the few months in Spain as his political training period. It put him off communism and Stalin for good, but confirmed his socialist attitude, which however never found a political home in a party, though he did support Labor in his remaining years, from the outside.

I like Jose Saramago as a writer. I like religion as a topic. However, it took me a very long time to get into this book. The first half dragged on for WAY longer than I felt it could have and though the second half delivered everything I'd been hoping for all along, the fact that it took so long to get to it was bit disappointing. In the end, I think it could have been more effective as a novella. That said, I did enjoy it once it got moving.

I was very excited to read that book.But very shortly, my disappointment took me by surprise. Primitive writing, simple sentences, hackneyed subject used by so many writer in order to make some $$$
Seems like writer was in a rush to finish the book, many ideas have suffered a premature death. I believe, it is a shame that nowadays an ordinary (not to say pathetic) writer like that can get a Noble prize.
This book could be so much more, if given in the hands of a talented person!
If you are really looking for quality reading on the subject, I highly recommend Thomas Mann.

Saramago's `Gospel of Jesus Christ' is really Saramago's gospel taking pot-shots at the biblical Gospel. The Bible storyline is flagrantly ignored, replaced, changed, and enlarged, with Jesus, instead of being the "perfect sacrifice", being a pretty good guy who falls into sin just as easily as your or I. God the Father is uncaring, indifferent, unaware, incapable, and maybe even evil instead of being merciful and kind to His children "as high as the heavens are above the earth" per Isaiah. The massacre of the innocents by Herod, when he tried to eliminate the prophesied coming King, was used as a focus for illustrating God's unfairness. A lustful relationship with Mary Madgelene was used as example of Jesus' humanness

Oh well, enough said. If you really want to know the Gospel, you know where to find it. I don't believe Saramago has any concept of how seriously the Bible finds sin and how it affects everything in our world. It is so serious, according to the biblical gospel, that it took the death of Christ to pay for it (for those that cling to Him), and everyone else is sent to hell for eternity. If the gospel is true, and I believe it is 100% true, we had all better be deadly serious about what it says.

Saramago is a Nobel-Prize winning author, but this is not one of his better books. I suggest trying "Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis", "Blindness", or "The Double". You will get a full dose of his existentialism without the blasphemy.

I believe this novel will be especially compelling for those of whom it may not have been intended, namely ardent believers. Those of us who memorized passages, acted out scenes, and were often rebuked with parables. As a thought experiment on the psychology of Jesus it is most compelling, most notably for the style in which the narrative dialogue is constructed. Conversation is organic, it flows right along with the scene, and it is inferred within the context of the ongoing mental movie derived from the text. There is no punctuation, or demarcation of any kind to differentiate dialogue from description, omniscient narration, or internal ruminations. Admittedly, it takes some getting used to and requires a little to determine who is speaking at times, but the experience is well worth the effort and the fact that Jose pulls it off is a testament to his mastery. The story, in general, follows the account in the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke); however, key scenes have a different spin on them reveal the humanity that most certainly must exist within the Son of Man/Son of God. The Bible's account all too often deigns to the deity within Christ and treats his humanity as if it doesn't exist. I don't want to ruin the surprise which will accompany those episodes where these revelations of character emerge. All in all it was a provocative account, poetically envisioned, of an all too familiar story.

This is a wonderful work of fiction that is creatively devised and unique. It is certainly, as has previously been forewarned by others, not for the devout reader who will take offense when faced with a work of fiction that does not accurately depict Jesus and those closest to him as is told by the canonical Gospels and orthodox scholarship. Saramago takes the Gospels and distills them into a remnant not unlike a skeleton upon which he casts his own flesh of fiction. What is perhaps the most impressive aspect of this work is that one has to constantly remind her/himself that this is indeed a fictional tale and not a fifth Gospel. Saramago's use of traditional parables and events in the life of Jesus Christ helps to create and atmosphere that the reader can become confused in. It is very well done.

The one note of criticism I will make is one that has been made several times in reviews prior. Saramago does not use punctuation aside from periods and is apparently allergic to the `tab' key that would permit him to start a new paragraph every so often. It is a text that is very compact with little to distinguish dialogue (capital letters denote a new speaker) and can be very frustrating if you are a slow reader. If you are one who reads at a faster pace, the dialogue may come naturally as the story is read. I only mention this because it was at first frustrating to me, but I quickly adapted to the style and found no problem finishing it.

There are twists that are revealed along the lines of "Last Temptation of Christ," but with a new take. I suggest that it be read by anyone who likes creative and innovative fiction with a taste for the provocative or controversial - but please remember that this is fiction!