Recommended Reading: Spain

GREAT READS TO HELP YOU PLAN YOUR OWN ADVENTURES

SPAIN

Karen McCann's Recommended Travel Books: Spain

Chickens, Mules and Two Old Fools by Victoria Twead
Perhaps if Joe and Vicky had known what relocating to a tiny village in southern Spain would really be like, they might have hesitated... They had no idea of the culture shock in store. No idea they would become reluctant chicken farmers and own the most dangerous cockerel in Spain. No idea they would be befriended by an 85-year-old spliff-smoking sex-kitten ... Read more

Dancing In The Fountain: How to Enjoy Living Abroad by Karen McCann "I loved this book," wrote Lonely Planet. "I must have laughed aloud at least once in every chapter ... The advice in the book is terrific." The book chronicles Karen's adventures moving from Cleveland, Ohio, to Seville, Spain, where she discovers that living abroad is the best opportunity to reinvent yourself outside of the witness protection program. The book is "a delightfully well-written true-life adventure story," says New York Times bestselling author Chris Brady. "McCann's writing is inviting, immediately charming, and constantly entertaining." Read more

Duende: A Journey Into the Heart of Flamenco by Jason Webster The music started: two guitarists beating out more Alboreás. The women took turns to dance in a frenzy, each trying to outdo the other. “Deep Song always sings in the night,” Lorca had written. It was the credo of the flamenco: a rejection of the mundane, the ordinary, the life of the everyday man, embracing, rather, an extreme world – extreme passions, extreme feelings, the extremes of life and death. And it was a way of life I wanted to believe in ... Read more

A Journey of Days: Relearning Life's Lessons on the Camino de Santiago by Guy Thatcher He walked the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage route, hoping to discover the reason for the compulsion that drove him there. What he found instead was the timeless land of northern Spain, beauty, silence, mountains and plains, rain and relentless sun, snow in May, heartbreaking climbs, fatigue, and injury; friendly and welcoming people, transcendental joy, birth and death, and churros con chocolate. Read more

Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving One of the most entertaining travelogues ever written, Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra is a heady mix of fact, myth, and depictions of secret chambers, desperate battles, imprisoned princesses, palace ghosts, and fragrant gardens, described in a wistful and dreamlike eloquence. Irving would later write Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow, drawing on the legends he heard during a stay at the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. Read more

Unlike some of my better-organized and more practical blogger friends, I have not included any books on these pages (or indeed any products anywhere on my blog or website) due to sponsorship of any kind. The books here are ones that have helped me on my own journeys, and I believe you might find them entertaining and useful while planning your own adventures.