Need to get away?
If you're traveling this summer and stuck some afternoon in an uncomfortable corner of a backseat or airport terminal or time-share, you may want to bring a book about some faraway place to escape into. Here are a few suggestions:
Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson. Before there was Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Twilight and Underworld, we had the adventures of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever in The Land. Best of all, it's a three-book series.
The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin. Another predecessor to Hogwarts is the famed wizarding school on the Island of Gont where a young wizard named Ged accidentally unleashes a shadow creature. It has killed a full-fledged wizard and only its creator has the power to subdue it, before it can do more harm. Another three-book series.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is about a village somewhere in Central America where magic has persisted generations after being driven from the rest of the world by wars and the machine age and Western culture. This is the story of three generations of a family and a village and their struggles to maintain a hold on an older, perhaps better world that progress is rapidly erasing.
A movie to look for this summer is Crock of Gold about Shane McGowan, front man for a legendary punk band, The Pogues. The Pogues did what no other punk band could which was to reinterpret Irish folk classics as punk songs. You'll learn a lot about "The Troubles" or the roughly 100-year-long war for independence from England that has festered and boiled over in Ireland for generations. And the music is great.
For any new readers: My new novel, Tania the Revolutionary, is available on Amazon for Kindle and paperback or Barnes & Noble for eBook.