Book Seeks Publisher
The You of My Song: Notes from a Voluntary Exile is a book looking for a publisher. In the month of August, 2006, I sat down to make some notes on my experiences and observations since 1968, the year I left the U.S.A. and settled in Spain. When I started writing I was unaware that the subject matter would absorb me utterly for the next year and a half, while I chronicled both a young man’s experiences in this strange new country and his reflections on the even-stranger country he left behind.
This is a book which ranges over both sides of the Atlantic, from Spain to the U.S.A., between nostalgia and outrage, elation and desperation.
Who is this Mike Booth? I’ll tell you. He’s an outrageously outspoken Yank who has found his true home in Spain. He’s pugnacious, provocative, argumentative, somebody who raises your hackles and makes you yell “Bullshit!” But then you start examining what he’s saying and you realise that, instead of skating over controversial issues and mouthing inoffensive platitudes as most of us tend to do, Mike has the perspicacity and guts to get right down to the core of any matter. He views the world and its ways with enviable insight and, when he speaks, he speaks from the heart. No bullshit at all. He makes you THINK, goddamit! This man is dangerous. And now he’s written a book, for chrissake. Don’t read it if you have a weak constitution — too much truth can be bad for the conscience.
Dragging the bell jar to the right…. I do like that, it’s just what it feels like, even from here in Canada.