Elizabeth Gilbert: Big Magic, Riverhead Books, 9781594634710, hardback

I am a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing, loved her “Eat, Pray, Love” (but not the soapy film starring Julia Roberts!) and think she outdid herself with “The signature of all things” which read like a classic.  I always look forward to a new book she writes, she is immensely diverse in her writing.

Her latest book, “Big Magic – Creative Living beyond Fear”, out since September, is non-fiction, an inspirational book, trying to give you strength, a kick in the ass to live up to your own potential and to think outside the box when it comes to giving this sparkle of an idea inside you a chance to unfold.

I would not go as far as calling it esoteric; it is not, because Liz is far too down to earth for that. She draws on experiences from her own life or that of friends. I am particularly amused by her thought of ideas visiting you and if you do not pick up on them, they will find someone else to bring them to life.  As happened with the idea for a book , an Amazon jungle novel, she had and did not follow through only to find that Ann Patchett had hatched the idea and wrote a book on the very same subject, definately not knowing about the others plans.  

Liz  divides the book into several chapters:  courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust and divinity . The book reads as if a girlfriend is talking to you, I found it uplifting, easy to read and inspirational although some of her thoughts were a little too magical for me.  If you are stuck  whether it is on a personal or professional level,  she has some interesting thoughts to offer.

But I am definitely more of a fan when it comes to her fiction.  The cover is too kitschy for my European taste, the German publisher S. Fischer uses the same cover and the book is also called "Big Magic - Nimm dein Leben in die Hand und es wird dir gelingen." She is currently touring in Germany. 

Paul Theroux:  Deep South, with photographs by Steve McCurry, 9780241146729, Penguin Random House (Hamish Hamilton), hardback, paperback out in April 2016

Just having finished this 441 page doorstopper of a hardback, I can safely say this is literary travel writing at its best. Paul Theroux is a great storyteller and observer of the human race, his language is exquisite and a joy to read, his vocabulary so rich that I came across words I had never encountered before and had to look them up in a dictionary but then I am not a native speaker.

Holding a special fondness for Southern writers myself, especially Carson McCullers, and places like Savannah, Charleston and Cape Hatteras, I was very interested to hear that Paul Theroux had turned his attention to his home country and the Deep South in his latest book.

Never having been to Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, I was really curious about his road trip and encounters, spanning over four seasons.   But I was not prepared for the level of poverty, desperation, racial issues, poor housing, dying communities and unemployment pouring from these pages. I had thought this was a thing of the fifties and sixties maybe.   As Paul was to discover repeatedly, many towns he visited would have qualified easily for financial aid from the US government had they been a Third World country where the US spent millions of US $. Yet nothing was being done at home in the South, it was simply being ignored.  The Clinton Foundation is also turning a blind eye to obvious issues in Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s home state, focusing their attention on more PR worthy activities in the Third World. 

If it were not for the perseverance of black and white farmers and some idealist not to give up on their communities, large proportions of the southern countryside and towns would soon be looking like deserted ghost towns in the Wild West. 

I could not grasp how some people would want to continue to live there under the circumstances he describes. Most towns and villages seem still dominated by big landowners, being at the mercy of banks issuing loans for crops and agricultural machinery and the big farm up the road is still called “The Plantation”.  

He finds many of the people he talks to in the typical Southern meeting places, churches and guns shows. He receives invitations to homes of ministers, mayors, social workers and dirt poor farmers, black or white, writers or laborers and paints a very colorful portrait of his visits. Paul Theroux hears of the still bad quality of many schools and universities, some of the racial stories he reports are very depressing and seem incomprehensible in this day and age.  The Klan appears to be alive and well. 

But there are also the joys of his Southern travels:   the Blues, the friendliness, warmth and culture of being welcome almost everywhere as a stranger, the Southern cuisine and the beautiful countryside.  Some of the funnier episodes are his stories about sleeping in almost derelict, dirty motels in wayward towns, all owned by immigrants from India who miraculously are all called Patel.

The beautiful, atmospheric photographs taken by Steve McCurry who did not travel with Paul Theroux but taking his own road trip, give the people in this book a face.  

Tom Michell: The Penguin Lessons, Penguin/Michael Joseph, 97807181635, hardback, GPB 9, 99

This delightful little book was published yesterday but I had the privilege of reading the proof pre publishing, courtesy of my former colleague Grazyna from Penguin. What a heartwarming, enjoyable true story, I promise you light-hearted reading hours. A perfect christmas gift in my opinion!

Tom Michell takes us on a journey to Argentina of the 70ties where he worked as a 23 year old rookie English teacher in a boarding school for very wealthy South American boys. He makes the most of his stay by taking every opportunity he gets to travel and one of these journeys takes him to Uruguay where fate strikes. On his last day, he decides to take an evening stroll and finds a beach with stranded Magellan penguins covered in oil from an oil spill. All birds appear dead but he discovers one struggling penguin that seems to have survived the ordeal.  Without thinking twice he takes the penguin to his flat, trying to remove the oil with detergents and shampoo. When he tries to take the bird back to the beach after freeing him from his coat of oil, he refuses to leave his side. Not knowing what to do, he makes a fateful decision: to smuggle Juan Salvador as he has named him back to Argentina, without a clue what is to happen once he is at the boarding school. And there the true story begins, Juan Salvador, this penguin extraordinaire,  transforms the life of the boys at school and everyone else he meets during his life at St. George’s, teaching Tom Michel a few valuable penguin life lessons himself.

Rights have been sold to 20 countries and film rights are presently under negotiation, a new Livingston Seagull movie coming our way, I can just see it.