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The Roots of Rock, from Cardiff to Mississippi and Back: Listen Online

The Roots of Rock, from Cardiff to Mississippi and Back

Peter Finch’s latest book The Roots of Rock, from Cardiff to Mississippi and Back charts the evolution of rock and popular music, from a 1950s valve radio playing in a suburban Cardiff terrace to the reality of the music among the bars of Ireland, the skyscrapers of New York, the plains of Tennessee, the flatlands of Mississippi and the mountains of North Carolina. For each chapter there is a playlist of suggested records to listen to whilst reading, to bring alive Peter’s many sharp-witted stories. To give you a taste of Peter’s world of music, we’ll be creating playlists for each chapter which you can listen to on our Youtube Channel. The first of these is now available, so take a listen below…

Chapter 1: Howlin’ Wolf in City Road

This entertaining book is part musical autobiography, part travel literature and also an exploration of how music can create a world for the listener that is simultaneously of and beyond the place in which is is heard.

The Roots of Rock, from Cardiff to Mississippi and BackFinch gives us sharp-eyed accounts of gigs from Champion Jack Dupree to the Garth Mountain Boys, muses on the importance of the Dansette record player, ponders why Elvis never came to Wales (except multiply in Porthcawl’s legendary Elvis Festival), visits musical shrines and theme parks – Dollywood, Grand Ole Opry, Graceland, Stax, rides along with singing cowboys and recalls his attempt to form a band, The Blueswailers. Add in music in Ireland and Wales (and in Welsh), the Bible Belt, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Etta James, Ray Charles, Bert Jansch, Taylor Swift, Alan Stivell, Chet Atkins, the Appalachian Mountains and Pigeon Forge and Finch’s world of music is as broad as the last six decades allows.

We hope you enjoyed the playlist above. You can buy the book on our website.

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The Road to Zagora | Travelling with Mr Parkinson

In 2006, author Richard Collins was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Spurred on by news of his illness, Richard and his partner Flic resolved to seize life by the horns and see more of the world. The Road to Zagora tells the story of their subsequent adventures.

the road to zagora by richard collins

Here at Seren we’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of The Road to Zagora, a unique sort of travel memoir in which the author explores the good, the not-so-good and the surprisingly funny aspects of travelling with Parkinson’s disease. We thought we’d give you a sneak preview of the book to wet your appetites – so read on to hear about the adventures of Richard, Flic, and Mr Parkinson.

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A is for Aqaba (Jordan)

Travelling enriches your life and changes your understanding
of quite a few things. Home is a different place on your
return. You are a different person, having travelled. I have had
some preconceptions of other people and places quietly
overturned. I spend a lot of my time at home now because of
my poor health and have the opportunity to reflect on these
things. Or I do something daft like make an A to Z of place
names, each from a different country, and write a little
anecdote about each one. I once spent a couple of rainy days
doing this, starting with Aqaba in Jordan:

Forget Lawrence of Arabia arriving in Aqaba on camelback at
the head of a Bedouin army: we crossed the desert by bus, in
comfort, with wi-fi and air-con and reclining seats.

Aqaba is a port but also a seaside resort, a holiday destination
for Jordanians. We were at the beach on a Friday, the
Muslim holy day, and found that it wasn’t wall-to-wall joylessness
as Sunday is in some parts of Christendom (we once saw
a children’s playground in the west of Scotland with a sign
Closed on Sundays). People may have been to the mosque in
the morning but now they were having fun. Women were
dressed conservatively, some in long black robes, but it didn’t
stop them from going into the sea, snorkelling or messing
about on inflatable plastic ducks.

We had already had our preconceptions of Islamic society
challenged in the first Jordanian town we visited. The shoe
shop proudly displayed in their window a number of pairs of hi-heeled thigh-high leather boots in a choice of colours, red or
black. Did the women we passed on the street wear these under
their long robes? In what other context, we wondered, would
they be worn? I really can’t imagine.
The people of Jordan are renowned for their hospitality,
friendliness and sense of humour.

The Road to Zagora, Richard Collins

 

Richard Collins

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this cheeky preview of The Road to Zagora! If you did, then good news – you can find the book in our store here, and get a 20% discount through our store.

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Forthcoming Title: ‘Jonah Jones: An Artist’s Life’

To be released on 18th July 2011.
Author:

Peter Jones

Sculptor, painter, letter cutter, stained glass artist, novelist, travel writer, academic and administrator; Jonah Jones (1919-2004) was a twentieth century renaissance man.
Born near Newcastle into a family of miners he became a librarian before reluctantly volunteering for a non-combatant role in the Medical Corps during he second world war. He saw action in North Africa but also met a number of artists and craftsmen in the RAMC who fired his own passion to become an artist. After the war, now married and having survived severe case of TB he settled in his family’s homeland of Wales and began his ‘on the job’ education as a sculptor and letter cutter. Much of his early work was at Clough Williams-Ellis’s Portmeirion villages. The two became close friends and Jones widened his circle to include Richard Hughes, Bertrand Russell, John Cowper Powys and Huw Wheldon.

In a varied career Jonah Jones produced intimate sculptures, monumental installations, and beautiful inscriptions, in addition to writing novels published by leading London houses, a biography of Clough Williams-Ellis and a hugely regarded survey of the lakes of North Wales.

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Forthcoming Title: ‘Second Chance’

To be released July 18th 2011.
Author:

Sian James

Kate Rivers has it all; London life, successful acting career, and caring lover Paul. So why, when she is unexpectedly recalled to the Welsh village where she grew up, are both her past and her present such a struggle to come to terms with? Where is Paul when she needs him, and why does her handsome cousin Rhydian seem to feature so much in both her memory and her present dilemma? First Published in 2000, this classic tale is told with skill and sympathy by novelist Sian James.

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Join Our Online Book Club

Join our Online Book Club to get 20% off every book you buy from us.

It takes seconds to sign up to the Seren online book club – you will enjoy 20% off every puchase made.

You will be kept up-to-date with forthcoming titles, news and events. Be the first to know when a new title has just been released, see exclusive videos of Seren authors reading from their books and enjoy special offers which are available to our online Book Club Members only.

We want to contact people interested in Seren, its list, authors, events and news. And even the multinational publishers can’t rely on the usual media for this information so we want to open our own channel of communication.

Members help us understand our readers (ensuring we can continue to publish the books you enjoy), and help us make a better website. We know readers of Seren titles will be literate, informed and interested in a variety of styles and subjects. Our ambition is to make this site a prime port of call for all those interested in the goings-on in the (independent) publishing sector and beyond. We need feedback from visitors and recognise the value of their comments as a resource to make the site relevant and attractive.

We hope you’ll enjoy your membership, remember to log in as a member as soon as you enter the site

Click the link below to edit your account and sign up to become a full member of the Seren Book Club.

Sign up to the Book Club now!

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‘The Last Hundred Days’

Released 1st June 2011 by Patrick McGuinness.

An intricately plotted literary thriller about Ceausescus last hundred days in power, from an author who was a first-hand witness to the regime.

Set during Ceausescu’s last hundred days in power, Patrick McGuinness’s accomplished debut novel explores a world of danger, repression and corruption.

When our narrator, a young English student with a damaged past and an uncertain future, arrives in Bucharest he finds himself in a job he never applied for. With duties that become increasingly ambiguous and precarious, he soon finds himself uncomfortably and often dangerously close to the eye of the storm. He learns, as he goes, the uncertainty of friendships in a surveillance society: friendships that are compromised and riddled with danger and duplicity. He encounters dissidents, party apparatchiks, black-markerteers, diplomats, spies and ordinary Romanians, their lives all intertwined against a background of severe poverty and repression as Europe’s most paranoid regime plays out its bloody endgame.

The socialist state is in stasis, the shops are empty and old Bucharest vanishes daily under the onslaught of Ceaucescu’s demolition gangs. Paranoia is pervasive and secret service men lurk in the shadows.

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‘Daniel’s Beetles’

Released 16th May 2011 by Tony Bianchi.

Daniel’s Beetles is the author’s translation of his prizewinning novel, Pryfeta

Daniel is six. One afternoon, while playing with insects in the garden, he sees his father fall to his death. Is he upset? It’s difficult to say, because Daniel would prefer to attend to his beetles. Forty years later, he remembers nothing of the event. But two failed relationships and his elderly mother’s confusion  bring Daniel face-to-face with his demons. Then he meets Cerys and Dr Bruno and discovers a bold new way of regaining control over the past.

Daniel’s Beetles is an absorbing, unnerving novel about memory and forgetting, stories and lies. It describes our attempts to recreate ourselves in ways we can never fully control. And in Dr Bruno, it offers a disturbing glimpse of how our fears and desires can be manipulated by much larger forces.

Tony Bianchi is from North Shields, Northumberland and lives in Cardiff. The Welsh-language version of Daniel’s Beetles won the Daniel Owen Prize in 2007 and was short-listed for Wales Book of the Year. He has published two other novels in Welsh – Esgyrn Bach (2006) and Chwilio am Sebastian Pierce (2009) – and a volume of short stories, Cyffesion Geordie Oddi Cartref (2010). His English-language novel, Bumping (2010), was long-listed for the Portico Prize in 2010. He has also won awards for his poetry in Welsh.

‘One of the most exciting writers working in Wales today.’ (Lloyd Jones, Taliesin)

‘This is an intricate and multi-layered novel, rich in ideas and eloquent in expression, which will be pored over for years to come.’ (Owain Wilkins, Planet)

‘The writing is muscular and at times utterly overwhelming… I was exhilarated.’
(Robat Arwyn, adjudicator, National Eisteddfod of Wales)

 

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‘The Ivy Hides the Fig-ripe Duchess’

Seren is pleased to announce the newest poetry collection by Welsh writer Ellie Evans is released on 13th June 2011, head to the Seren website to get your copy today!

The Ivy Hides the Fig-ripe Duchess is an exhilarating first collection of poems from Ellie Evans. Using a surrealist palette of imagery and a tightly focused idiom, the author takes us on strange journeys:to the post-apocalyptic world of the title poem, or into a skewed 18th century Venice in ‘The Zograscope’. These strange worlds are always to the purpose, they are, as Marianne Moore famously said of poetry ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them.’ We obliquely unearth childhood trauma, fraught or intense relationships and also a singular (and perhaps also Welsh?) delight in rebellion, and in escape through the imagination. Poems like ‘Picnic with Earthquakes’ and ‘Jekyl Island, Georgia’ deftly align exotic locales (Eastern Europe, South East Asia, Greece and the USA,) with intimate states of mind. A fascination with art and history emerge in: ‘A Brief History of Topiary’ and ‘Two Monologues from The Odyssey’. There is also a palpable delight in technique: you will find a sonnet, a villanelle, triolets and a concise free verse where she employs rhyme, half-rhyme, and subtle alliteration.

Seren will keep you posted on reviews and comments on Evans’s poetry collection.

To find out more about Seren and Ellie Evans search our blog or go to our website http://www.serenbooks.com/

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WIN a proof copy of Tony Bianchi’s ‘Daniel’s Beetles’

We are giving away 5 proof copies of Tony Bianchi’s latest novel Daniel’s Beetles, 10 weeks before official publication. Daniel’s Beetles is the author’s translation of his prizewinning Welsh novel, Pryfeta. Daniel’s Beetles is an absorbing, unnerving novel about memory and forgetting, stories and lies. It describes our attempts to recreate ourselves in ways we can never fully control.

All you have to do is write Daniel’s Beetles in the subject line of an email and send to [email protected]

Closing date is 4th April 2011. See Terms & Conditions

To learn more about the novel and the author check our blog under ‘Seren Authors’ and ‘New Releases’.
All information is also on our website.

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Bruce Cardwell Launches Noteworthy – Machynlleth

Bruce Cardwell will exhibit a selection of pictures from the Noteworthy: Images of Welsh Music project at Moma Wales. Mavis Nicholson will open the exhibition at 12pm Saturday 2nd April 2011.

Bruce Cardwell will then celebrate the publication of Noteworthy at 1pm at Y Tabernacl auditorium and will be signing books early afternoon. Robin Huw Bowen will be playing the triple harp, Bowen’s influence on the worlds of Welsh folk music and harping has been far-reaching.

For more information please visit www.momawales.org.uk or call 01654 703355

Bruce Cardwell author of Hoofpicks: Photographs of Horse in Wales, is also celebrating a birthday concert at Y Tabernaci, 8th April which includes an excellent programme of Celtic Music.