Friday, May 31, 2013

Free Friday: A Book for the Beach

Theoretically it’s summer, which means it might be time to get your summer reading list in order. If you like physical books and enjoy turning pages made of paper, guess what? We’re working on a way to have all three of my current volumes of short stories and The Red Scorpion available in print along with the eBook versions on Kindle.

Personally, if you allow me to be Frank, and not Bob or Jack, I really do enjoy my Kindle when travelling. And until their available in print, we’ll be making them available Free on Fridays for the next couple months, one each week.

This week, N&L Publishing is offering Newmanesque. If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What should I read next?” this might be a good place to go. It’s not a long book and I promise that at least some of the stories will be entertaining.

Here’s what a reader of my stories from Portugal wrote about these stories:

“My very first impression is that there's a certain style in some ways similar to Franz Kafka which is good and intense… very mysterious for one doesn't know where the whole thing is going to go, but is sure that there's a message to be captured from the many moments stated in the short sentences that are all poignant to the story. Perhaps what I want to say is that I feel the work to be extremely existentialist in a serious way and not in an ironic one, best portrayed by Sartre. Also, there's an enormous spiritual and ethical awareness in the writing which is not directly implied in Kafka's work but if one reads him under the light of the Jewish religious upbringing he had like Harold Bloom pointed out, one will find it there, something that is completely ruled out in Sartre's views. Newmanesque is slightly more lyrical or poetic if you will, but carries that acute seriousness and extreme loss of hope and faith (common to Kafka) only the author gives it a try in explaining it, be it searching for religious/spiritual arguments or other authors’ references which I very much sympathize with because it becomes a "loss of hope when hope is not all lost." In this regard Newman achieves something great for the stories are open cycles (not dead-ends like Kafka), they become allegories, which by definition are circles constantly closing and opening on themselves, matching Borges here beautifully.

“I also like very much how he builds the stories to show the two sides of the same coin without being preachy or moralist, again this duality which has been around since the beginning of time, is explored in a very simple and engaging way enabling us to breathe and reflect when needed; for although the stories are of an existential character they are mostly of an extrovert attitude, in the sense that the reader understands what the character is feeling by what he says and not by some introvert description of how he feels which is extremely liberating and contemporary, reminding me of Eco in some ways and of Plato's simple dialogues full of meaning and hidden messages.”

Here’s a link so you can download today. If you need an app to read it on your computer or iPad, it’s free and available on Amazon.com as well.Oh, and if you like, please feel free to add a review. That would be most welcome.

MEANTIME, if you’re reading this here in the Northland, there are some cool things to do this weekend including art openings at the PRØVE Gallery and Ochre Ghost where some cool new work by Oakley Tapola will be displayed. It’s also the third evening of the DuSu Film Festival with films on the silver screen at both the Zinema and Teatro Zuccone.

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