A Book

Hi Blogheads:

Today is a free post so I thought I'd like to write about my favourite British authors.

I started reading at quite a young age. I was also a very fast reader and if I liked a book I had a tendency to search for and read books by the same author.

As a child, I read everything by Enid Blyton, C.S.Lewis (the Narnia books), Arthur Ransome. As I got older I read everything Tolkien and Orwell. I then got into Science Fiction and read hundreds of Sci-Fi books. Authors I read included Micheal Moorcock, Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert. Later I got into more existentialist stuff like Sartre and Camus plus authors like Kafka & Dostoyevsky. I later discovered Mervyn Peake who wrote the Gormenghast trilogy and which is possibly my favourite read of all time. 

Since arriving in Chile I've read many books in Castellano. I read many things by Garcia Marquez plus Bolano, Sabato y others. More recently I have been reading British author David Mitchell - who is wonderful - and Haruki Murakami. The last novel that really blew me away was The Book of Strange New Things by Dutch writer Michel Faber. It's sort of something "spiritual" in a Science Fiction setting - but it isn't really Sci-fi. Here's a link to the wiki page: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_Of_Strange_New_Things

I read this year I have read a really good book about the stomach called The Gut and the first half of a book by Murakami but I haven't had too much time to read many novels. 

Write a 200-word post on a book or genre of fiction you like.
Say:
What the book or genre is,
Why you like it,
When you read it for the first time.
Mention anything else you think is important or interesting. Leave a comment on your teacher's blog & on the blogs of 3 classmates.

An Artist

Good Afternoon Bloggers!

Today I'd like you to write about an artist you like. It could be an artist from any discipline, music, theatre, fine arts like painting or sculpture, or visual arts like photography, the graphic novel. manga or anime. I'm going to write about Mervyn Peake, my favourite author, who was also a renowned illustrator in his day. I discovered Peake via one of my older sisters, Clare. I loved his books because of there insights of a "shadier" side of people's (or animals for that matter) character. I think the first illustrations I saw were from his children's book "Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor". It wasn't the sort of illustrations you would have expected for a kid's book, the characters were too real. and scary. A few years later I found a copy of one of Peake's nonsense poetry novels that he illustrated and I just loved his slightly dark sense of humour. Then I discover his illustrations of Alice through the looking glass (duh! Alice in Wonderland) which I found amazingly creative. I must add that I was already hooked on his boos by then. Anyway, I was lucky enough to see a wonderful exhibition in London in about 1986 that had a huge selection of his illustrations on show and it blew my mind. Peake never received the recognition he deserved during his lifetime but he has been repeatedly cited as an artist (illustrator, writer, painter) who was way ahead of his time.

Write about an artist you like.
Say:
Who the artist is,
How you discovered the artist,
What kind of work the artist does
What you like about the artist.

Mention anything you think is important or interesting. Try to write at least 200 words. Leave a comment on my blog and on the blogs of 3 classmates.

A Friend

Good Morning Bloggers!

Today I'm going to talk about a friend. The person I'm going to tell you about is Martin. I first met him in 1978 when he auditioned as a drummer for the band I played in. I was 18 or 19 and he was 16. We got on well from the start. I like Martin because he has a good sense of humour and is generally a very easy going person. I guess the main things we did together apart from playing music was to go for a drink or watch movies together. We also went to a lot of concerts together like The Clash and David Bowie. We played in the same band for about 5 or 6 years then Martin went to study art in Hull, a city in the North of England, and I moved to London. We kept in touch and Martin used to come and stay with me whenever he was down south. When he finished university he moved to London and we lived in the same place for about 6 months. A few years later we lost touch. I was living in Spain and Martin moved to the USA. We had no contact for about 10 years but I finally managed to track Martin down on the internet. Nowadays Martin lives in New York working as an illustrator and doing restoration of old artworks. About 10 ago, I went to stay with Martin for a week. It was my first time in New York and it was great to have someone who lived there show me all the sights. We spent lots of time walking and talking and it was really nice to catch up after all this time.

Here's a photo of when we were younger:)
 Write about a good friend.
Say:
Who they are,
How long you've known them
Why you like them,
What things you do together.
Mention anything else you think is important.
Write at least 200 words.
Leave a comment on my blog and on the blogs of 3 classmates.

A walk you would like to do again

Write about a walk you did that you would like to do again.

My family is a family of keen walkers. When I was a child, my parents would often take us out for walks at the weekend. One of my favourite walks was up a Welsh hill called Moel Famau. Normally we would start from home in Mynydd Isa and walk about 5 kilometers through Mold to Loggerheads. Depending on the weather or how much time we had, we would then decide whether to do a walk up to the summit of the hill or to do a full trail. The walk up the hill is about 6km and the full trail is about 17km.

My favourite was doing the full trail because part of it was though a country park called Cat walk because it was a very narrow path that was quite high (especially for a young child!). Also, this part of the walk was through woods and along a river, the other part was pine forest and bare grassland at the top of the hill. I must have walked up that hill at least 50 times in my life. One of my aunties lived in a farmhouse at the foot of the hill and I often stayed with her in my summer holidays from school. She had a son who was a year older than me. However, when I was about 10 years old he had a car accident and lost one of his legs and so, unfortunately for him, his walking days were over. I think the last time I climbed Moel Famau was in the 1980’s but I’d love to do this walk again as it would bring back all my childhood memories. There’s a website with information about the country park here:

http://www.walkmag.co.uk/walks/wales-loggerheads-country-park-flintshiredenbighhire/

It even has a Facebook page!

Obviously, these didn’t exist when I was younger but at least you can get an idea of what it’s like.

Write about a walk you would like to do again
Say:

Where it is,

When you did this walk before

Why you enjoyed it,

Why you would like to do it again.

Mention anything else you think is important. Write at least 200 words. Leave a comment on my blog and on the blogs of at least 3 classmates.