The Guadalajara Reporter
Guadalajara's Largest English Newspaper
It’s hard to know how to take on an anthology of 22 works about Mexico by living, English-speaking authors who live or at least have spent a lot of time here. Where to begin? While the stories and essays in “Mexico: Sunlight & Shadows” have been evenhandedly listed in alphabetical order, the idea of reading them that way did not spur me forward.
The production line of books on Mexico seems to get longer with each passing year. Dozens of tomes were published in 2014, the best selling titles of which appear below (guide books excluded) in no particular order. Only one of the books in this list was self-published, which goes to disprove the myth that editorial houses are not interested in Mexican-themed works. Go online at Amazon.com to check out prices and availability.
Put yourself in this scenario: Your name is Judy. Your husband’s name is Bob. Together you have discovered Lake Chapala in central Mexico (for Bob it is “love at first sight”) and there you have recently purchased your retirement home, where “One entire sliding-glass wall opened onto a view of the lake … and palm trees … spilled down the mountainside into the village.”
Editorial Wisemaz, the only full-service English-language book publisher in Mexico, announces a reorganization designed to clarify the company’s mission and streamline sales and distribution in the United States and Canada.
“The Hostages of Veracruz” is a romantic thriller set in Mexico written by former Guadalajara Reporter staffer (1996-2001) Grady Miller.
In 2000 Karen Blue published her first book, “Midlife Mavericks: Women Reinventing Their Lives in Mexico.”
This historical season is the time to learn about Mexico, so we queried a handful of knowledgeable informants about what they recommend, other than Allyn Hunt’s column. What follows are their favorite books about Mexico in English, be they fiction or nonfiction, wide or narrow in scope. Many were originally written in English, some in Spanish, and many are available in both languages, which can make for instructive side-by-side reading for those wishing to improve their command of either language. We generally omitted books our informants described as “boring,” although this list includes both intellectual and popular titles, many of which can be found in the AMSOC (Guadalajara) or LCS (Lake Chapala Society) libraries, or at Sandi bookstore in Guadalajara.
