Yet another ⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review of my latest book

 

Thanks for your very complimentary words, Andrew M...

"I found Brett's very personal account of his travels through Spain a moving and very rewarding read. 

His affection for the country and its peoples shines through and his encounters with the people he meets on his travels avoid caricature and shallow conclusions. 

He is clearly still discovering aspects of the country he loves and enjoying the opportunity to complete the picture."

[Read the full Amazon reader review here.]

Video: Launching my book "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain" in Barcelona

Reading two short extracts and doing a Q and A session with an audience at Fahrenheit 451, an independent bookshop in Barcelona. Gary Gibson from Blanquerna Ramon Llull University kindly introduced me.

Launch of my latest book (in Barcelona)

I'm happy to say I'll be launching my non-fiction book,

"Slow Travels in Unsung Spain" at this unique independent bookshop:
Fahrenheit 451

(C/- de la Ribera, 8, [El Born] BARCELONA 

[Metro: Barceloneta] 

Friday, 3Oth June, 7.00-8.00PM.

We'd love to see you there!

(Look inside the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NJG91W7/ )

Anaïs Nin started her famous diary in Barcelona?

 

"In Barcelona I didn't have the impression that the absence of my father was definitive. I thought it could come at any moment. We saw his family, his parents, his grandmother...It was his homeland...".

A blog (in Catalan) on the childhood of the great writer in Barcelona.

"The women ham carvers of Spain" – #InternationalWomensDay

​[Raquel Acosta is one of Spain's most high-profile carvers (Credit: Josu Acosta)]

 "Carving legs of Iberian ham in bars, restaurants and at events has traditionally been a man's job. Now, a new generation of women is taking their place at the slicing table."

(From personal experience, I can say this carving is very difficult to do...)

Jill Petzinger's article for BBC Travel here.

In the best of company

 

Humbled and honoured to be found next to the brilliant Robert Hughes at independent Come In bookshop in Barcelona. 

(Thanks to Leigh for photo.)

Destinations and returns

In Slow Travels in Unsung Spain, I needed a destination. 

One of the reasons I wrote the book was this man, the great author, Antonio Muñoz Molina. 

In Andalucia's Ubeda, his first hometown, I talked to one of his family then turned and headed to my own home in Catalonia. 

The long way.

(Read more of my latest book here.)

I was humbled by this...

 

Lovely sentiments about Slow Travels in Unsung Spain by a reader this week. 

Thanks a million, Emma!

Yet another ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review of my latest book

 

Isidra says:

"This is an unusual travel book...

Being a Spaniard myself, I really enjoyed the mix of literary musings, historical facts and sightseeing that Hetherington offers...

As the title says, it's a slow kind of travel, one that allows for immersion and a nuance, very personal travelogue that mixes reflection, description and awe. 

It made me eager to start traveling by train!"

[Read the full Goodreads reader review here.]

New ⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader-review for "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain"

 

More reader's words I greatly appreciate:

"This is a nicely paced book.

He weaves in some Spanish history, art and modern Spanish literature...He keenly feels how it is for an outsider to be in another culture...

I highly recommend this book not just for travellers."

Slow Travels in Unsung Spain is available at virtually all online book retailers (including here.)

Another new ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review (that makes it all worthwhile)

"Strikingly akin to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.

Exudes authenticity and realism. 

Hetherington gives us vivid pictures of the innards of Spain. 

A book meant more for explorers than for tourists. 

I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to know about the real Spain."

Thanks very much, Andrew! [Review here.]

Yet another new ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader review for my latest book

"What counts are [his] encounters with the locals..."

"This narrative integrates history without overburdening the text..."

"He's done a great job of immersing himself."

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NJG91W7/#customerReviews

Another 5 Star Review for "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain"

 

Reader Review 

Timecheck

5.0 out of 5 stars A unique view by someone who loves Spain

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2021

Verified Purchase

"I enjoyed reading this book by someone who obviously loves Spain. His observations are 

insightful, and particularly to me because it is the view of someone outside the culture, looking 

in. These are not small towns for the most part, and many are off the tourist track, so the author

is giving us a unique view.

It is a little wordy and more literary references than I prefer, so I would like to see tighter editing

in future works, but still a valuable read."

See this Amazon reader review here.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Timecheck (from Oakland, CA United States.) I do love 

Spain, most of the time...But sometimes she makes you disillusioned too!

Video: "Paul McCartney - Córdoba - Spain (1966 ) ( The Beatles en España)" -- A home video:

"Until now, there had ben no evidence that McCartney had been a tourist in Córdoba. Here are the images of some emblematic places of the Andalusian capital, such as the Plaza de la Corredera, exteriors of the Alcazar de los Reyes Católicos, Patio de los Naranjos, Cathedral Mosque.

The recording also includes children and local people in their daily lives.

Paul McCartney visits the Spanish city of Córdoba together with The Beatles' roadmanager Mal Evans. 

In November 1966, McCartney traveled through Spain towards Almería with the intention of visiting John Lennon, who was there working on the movie "How I Won the War " by Richard Lester but filming had already finished and John was no longer in Almería.

Apparently, McCartney and Evans traveled from Bordeaux (France) to the Almeria coast.. Evans and McCartney traveled to Seville, where on November 12 they took a plane to Madrid, and from there they traveled to Nairobi. 

According to Diario de los Beatles and the journalist and writer Jordi Sierra i Fabra, McCartney returned to London on November 19, 1966."

My latest editorial work now published: "10 Hikes near Malmo + Copenhagen"

I'm very happy to have been the editor for the English language version of this superb guide by Rikard Anderson. 

Available here.

"Gets to the Heart of the Real Spain" -- Another ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader-review of "Slow Travels..."

 

I'm extremely thankful for these lovely words of praise from Lesley Postle about my latest non-fiction book...

"As someone who used to live in Spain and has been away for far too long, for me, Brett's book was a moving nostalgia trip through a country I love.

He brought it all back to life for me in a way that could only be done by someone who knows and understands the place really well. I adored the way he describes the minutiae of Spanish life, the food, the music, and the way things often don't quite work as they should over there, like having a tourist office which is impossible to find.

For me, the mix of travel writing with short commentaries on politics, history, religion and culture works well. There isn't too much of any one topic, so it never gets boring. I just wish it had been even longer. It was really interesting to read about some of the lesser-known towns which I do not know, but which I'd now love to visit.

I could really relate to Brett's personal story, having lived in a similar area and experienced a lot of the same things. It made me quite homesick and even more determined to get back there some day.

Original reader review titled "Gets to the Heart of the Real Spain" at Amazon here.

A free read of "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain"

If you like armchair travel you can now read any part of the book for free at Scribd!

Click here.

"a compelling and eclectic narrative full of the unexpected" -- Nick Inman, Rough Guides

New ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ reader-review for "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain"

I was humbled by the comments of a reader named Louise Davies recently about my latest book (available here.) 

Her online review said:

5,0 de 5 estrellas

 "A traveller's tale of hidden parts of Spain"

"I love the personal sentiments felt by the author and expressed honestly...

 An unusual, inspiring travel book interspersed with literary observations. 

Well-written and researched."

"Weightless" -- My latest article for Catalonia Today magazine

What is wrong with this scene?

Excited children playing together in a Barcelona street, their parents standing nearby watching, chatting, smiling.

Of course, only a few months ago, there was everything natural, normal and perfectly ‘right’ about this everyday picture. 

Now (at least at the time of writing) the responsible adults in the scene are breaking the law and can be fined for it. Something that was as wholesome as a summer day suddenly became an awful sin.

So, how are people in our part of the world dealing with this and other similar flips of fate?

One person who has a sharp insight into how Catalonia is coping at the moment is Australian psychologist Leigh Matthews [pictured above,] owner and founder of Therapy in Barcelona. In mid-March, flying back to Barcelona after visiting the Alhambra for her 43rd birthday, she travelled from the pleasures of Granada into a city under lockdown.

Leigh believes that Covid-19 has all the ingredients of the kind of collective, traumatic crisis that she routinely deals with on a personal level in her work: the element of surprise, a threat to essential aspects of life and loss of control.

She says she is able to bear witness to the stories of her international colleagues and clients. In her opinion, they bring expat powers of adaptability and a comfort with ambiguity to difficulties that are firsts for everyone here.

As a comparison, the current number of infections in Spain stands at 264,663 and deaths at 26,620 whereas Australia’s are at 6,941 and 97. “This disparity is great,” Leigh says. “Here we are tormented with a huge toll and suffocating restrictions, but Australians, with their elaborate economic rescue package and comparatively mild threat, are also gripped with uncertainty, grief and exhaustion from groundhog days of confinement.”

To Leigh, the pandemic reminds her of the engineers charged with saving the lives of the astronauts in the Apollo 13 space capsule almost exactly 50 years ago. They solved the crucial problem of making a square filter fit into a space that had only been designed for a round filter. 

In her view, what governments in Catalonia and Spain have to face is something very similar to the Apollo 13 scenario.

She believes the question for the authorities is essentially the same one for many people: doing what is possible. “Identify a problem. Throw the resources you have to deal with it onto the table and figure out how to manage the problem. Variation in contagion and death rates aside, we all face the “Apollo 13 exercise” daily – fumbling for solutions to working from home while crisis schooling, mastering the Virabhadrasana pose in online yoga and simultaneously managing stress, grief, trauma and death anxiety with the menace of infection and economic impairment looming over us,” she says.

“As a psychologist I can give you the shopping list of coping strategies. I can tell you there is resilience to celebrate, but resilience is intersected by privilege and the domestic, political and economic theatres we inhabit. The cohort of people in my life are well resourced, but the pandemic is as multitudinous as each story of every person living it. Many stories won’t have an Apollo 13 finale. They came up with something adequate and so can we, even if it’s just wearing a mask to take care of others or writing a “new normal” that embraces everyone.”

Personally speaking, some days I feel the gravity of the situation holding me down. On other days, like the Apollo 13 crew, I am weightless. I almost float.

[This article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, July 2020.]

"A dream of trains..."

I have a love of trains. They feature in my latest book, "Slow Travels in Unsung Spain" but this Australian guy has also written and dreamt about them during lockdown...

"Sleeper trains, after suffering a decline in the first half of this decade, are making a big comeback in their European heartland after Greta Thunberg’s climate activism..."

Read more from source here.