Imagine a language course that starts off with the instructor giving a monologue that lasts all of sixty minutes, delivered almost entirely in Spanish. What our teacher, Hugo, gave us on that first day was a rundown, delivered at a normal conversational pace, on what we could expect in the next month. There were very […]
Continue Reading
Cogan’s Reviews I’ll let you in on a secret about book reviewing. It’s simply this: it’s much more enjoyable to review a book you don’t like than one you like. Dishing out dirt is a helluva lot more fun than singing praises. When you really don’t like a book, it’s wonderful to be able to […]
Continue Reading
Cogan’s Reviews The title of this travel book sounds a bit odd to us now. But the question of whether Baja California was an island was in doubt for a very long time. In fact, as late as 1737, a map was drawn by a German Jesuit that showed the peninsula as an island. Now, […]
Continue Reading
Cogan’s Reviews This is an odd volume. I originally bought it because it advertises itself as “a gathering of some of the best travel writing ever” about Mexico. However, you quickly find as you dip into it that not all the articles are about travel. Also, very few of them have been written in recent […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Here’s a nifty idea for a book for both Spanish language students and for people interested in Mexico. Author De Mente has found an effective way to reach both groups with a volume that takes a studious and careful look at 130 key words in Spanish and has written a couple of pages […]
Continue Reading
Cogan’s Reviews Mexican immigration into the U.S., according to the author, represents “the greatest migration of people in the history of humanity.” She estimates that some 5 million legal Mexican immigrants reside in the U.S. plus there’s a further 2 million illegal immigrants also in the country. Those numbers actually seem low. They were produced […]
Continue Reading
Cogan’s Reviews As novelist and travel writer Tony Cohan says in his narrative about San Miguel de Allende: “My editor wanted me to write about life here in the region where we live. At that time, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and Querétero ranked a page or two each in the guide books, day stops […]
Continue Reading
Cogan’s Reviews Here’s a rather odd novel from the author of “The Bridges of Madison Country” and “Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend”. I’ve always thought of Waller as a writer of romances, going only by the titles of his books, never having read any of them. This one, however, is a quite suspenseful “chase” story […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews It’s made up of some 48 items about the country taken from a wide variety of sources. And they’re almost all interesting. The topics cover the gamut of attractions and delights from a dissertation on mariachis to Carlos Fuentes’ essay on Mexico City’s main square. Nothing is more Mexican than the mariachis’ songs […]
Continue Reading
Cogan’s Reviews I’m not sure why I haven’t reviewed this book, currently in its 3rd edition, sooner. It’s been around since 1993 and it was one of the first books my wife and I read when we arrived here in Ajijic eight years ago. And – heaven knows! – I’ve reviewed more than 60 books […]
Continue Reading