An Andalusian Reading Diary | Summer, 2023

[@jD-P8g3s]

Truly wonderful. Culture sustaining the intelligence and providing sanity in a present reality that sometimes seems otherwise.

[@SherdsTube]

Thanks for your kind words.

[@TheAndersification]

The cinematography in this video is next level.

[@SherdsTube]

Thanks so much, mate!

[@danielprice6387]

Please don't stop making these reading diaries. They are utterly life-affirming.

[@SherdsTube]

I'll do my absolute best. Working on another right now.

[@kewl0210]

Great stuff as always. Your stuff always helps motivate me to read more.

[@SherdsTube]

Thank you. Very glad to hear to hear that!

[@kasianfranmitja5298]

Really nice video as always. Cant even imagine the work and thought u put into this. It feels like you worked out everything to as close to perfection as one can get tbh. I really like the unedited "rambles" that come and go throughout the video. It penetrates the video in some sort of way, and makes it feel more intimate and lively!

[@SherdsTube]

Ah thank you so much for saying so. Reading this really made my day. Yes, I'm trying to loosen up a little bit - I'm very glad to hear that some people like that. Thanks once again!

[@kasianfranmitja5298]

@@SherdsTube THANK YOU!

[@kieran_forster_artist]

Such a synchronicity…I posted a Borges portrait today hours before I got around to the enjoyment of this video. No expectation, consciously anyway.

[@SherdsTube]

Wow - that's quite the coincidence. :)

[@feanor7080]

How beautiful and tragic a place Spain is! For me it was first explored by Ernest Hemingway in 'For Whom The Bell Tolls'' and later by George Orwell in 'Homage to Catalonia', both outsiders writing about that devastating civil war. As a student of history, I find the Spanish Civil War to be the one of the saddest and most multilayered conflicts in Europe and that makes for great literature. Most of what I've read after was history about the war, Franco and the Catholic church (both before and after the war) but these picks do seem very interesting!

[@tobsi2256]

another (more weird) take / metaphor on the Spanish civil war is Blue Of Noon by George Bataille. I definitely recommend reading its goodreads page. :)

[@TheSalMaris]

Another wonderful travelogue-- this time with poetry. You remind me to catch up my reading on Lorca. The Gibson biography sounds like a great start. Thank you for this.

[@SherdsTube]

Thanks so much. Yes, it was a lot of fun exploring him quite intensly. The biography is terrific. :)

[@tedlewis392]

Another great video. I'm in my early 50s and have never traveled to Spain but for some reason I've always felt drawn to its literature and its culture in general. Am planning a trip very soon. Also, I'm a huge Lorca fan.

[@SherdsTube]

Thank you. I hope you make it there soon! :)

[@joachimmagdziak7742]

Interesting and inspiring as always. I'm currently in an intensive spanish mood, reading Borges in original for language practice, and also some works of Góngora and Francisco de Quevedo. I found Quevedo's "The Swindler" equally interesting as "Don Quixote", despite it's shortness. I was highly moved and absorbed by it's vivid descriptions and the Rabelaisian mix of ribald picaresque and prose poem. As "Quixote" is both a chivalric romance and an anti romance, Quevedo's work is similarly ambiguous picaresque novel.

[@SherdsTube]

Thanks for the kind words. 'The Swindler' is entirely new to me, I'm afraid to say, but it looks very interesting.

[@saintonfire77]

I noticed in this wonderful video you did not mention how Federico Garcia Lorca died, murdered by Francoist rebels in August 1936. Check out this novel 'The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell' by Carlos Rojas Translated by Edith Grossman.

[@SherdsTube]

Looks interesting! Thanks for sharing.

[@ForrestAguirre]

Compelling and lively, as usual. My great grandfather came to America from the Basque regions in the Pyrenees to the north. Some day, I must go there. I'm wondering if there are any great writers from the Basque region?

[@SherdsTube]

Thanks so much, Forrest! I'm sure there are many, but I'm not familiar with any. Let me know what you dig up. :)

[@kevinsommerville6693]

Thank you, Sam. A beautiful document, as always. Such a pleasure. Thank you for sharing your Andalusian immersion and your musings on Lorca. I intended to read the Gibson biography at one time and now your film has rekindled that desire! Did you ever read "In Search of Duende"? It's a slim but worthwhile book, saturated in deep song and the Spanish guitar. Here's that other famous Andalusian, Segovia, playing two pieces by Ponce at the Alhambra palace. The recording is enriched by its birds. You may know it, you may dislike it. Anyway... kzbin.info/www/bejne/lam1h6OPhtmLa8k

[@SherdsTube]

Thanks so much, Kevin. I haven't read 'In Search of Duende', but I absolutely must. What a beautiful performance - I hadn't seen it before. Thanks for sharing it with me. :)