Can't Judge a Book by its Cover

If you're like us, "in the garlic," does not sound like a place you want to be. Thank goodness Valerie Collins and Theresa O'Shea wrote their book to keep you in the loop - or in the garlic as you'll find when you read it.

Both authors are British transplants to Spanish soil who, in their combined 50+ years in Spain, have had to learn the hard way that "bikbaporoob" is the local pronunciation of a common cold remedy from the Vick company and can enlighten us with priceles sultural tidbits like the true origins of foosball (just a teaser - they involve the Spanish Civil War, a kidnapping an a plane hijacking.)

This hilarious vocabulary checklist is great for anyone visiting or living in Spain or who is simply curious about this culture and its 13 (yes that's right, a fact we didn't know until we read In the Garlic,) living languages. Valerie and Theresa were tired of stereotypical or just plain factually inaccurate descriptions of the country so decided the time had come to put their hard-won knowledge and experience to work describing the culture from an insider/outsider's perspective.

In the Garlic is available at BCN Books:
Roger de Llúria 118
tel. 93 457 7692

Story of a Vacation

What? You haven’t read Miguel and María Gallardo’s María y Yo? You’ve gotta be kidding! The illustrations by themselves are fantastic but once you’ve read the story about his vacation at a tourist resort in the Canary Islands with his autistic 12 year-old daughter you’ll be wishing you could go with them next time to share in their complicity. You may recognize this illustrator’s style from the Herald Tribune, La Vangaurdia or The New Yorker, but here he’s a father, using what he can to help his little girl.

You can find it at:

La Cantral del Raval

carrer Elisabets 6

tel 93 317 0293

Stay Home and Read a Book

January is the perfect month to curl up at home with tea and a book – you won’t spend money on silly sale items and you won’t catch the flu, according to one of those cheesy free newspapers. If you saw the picture of Hillary Clinton on the cover of El País the other day, you know why the book should be Inés García-Albi’s Nosotras que contamos (Plaza & Janés.)

Including Carmen de Burgos, aka Colombine, who became a journalist in1901 in part to support her daughter and María Eugenia Alberdi who turned a crafts magazine into a magazine for women coming of age in the post-Franco era, Nosotras que contamos narrates the history of Spain in the last century through the anecdotes of the women who fought their way to being allowed to report it.

While the book started as a collection of interviews, the author found the women’s stories so compelling that she kept going, using over 50 interviews to complete the picture of women in Spanish journalism in the last century. García-Albi, an experienced journalist (and my friend, but that's got nothing to do with anything,) who’s worked with El País and Canal + among others, says that even she reads the newspaper differently after writing the book. That’s why, when you see a picture of a crazy lady on the front page of a newspaper, you have to ask yourself just who put that picture there.