This month Helmut Erxleben reports on The Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa.  “If someone had asked me who Roger Casement was before I read this book, I would have answered with a shrug.  Roger Casement made news in the early part of the 20th century when he exposed the corrupt and inhuman practices by the colonial powers during the extraction of rubber from the jungles of theBelgian Congo and the Amazon.  His reports shocked the world with the details of the unimaginable suffering of the indigenous population to harvest the ‘Black Gold’.  In 1911 he was knighted by the British Crown for his efforts.  This did not deter Casement, who was born in Dublin, to involve himself more and more in the struggle to freeIreland from British rule. His contacts with the enemy during the war were seen as treason and he was subsequently hanged in 1916 by the British. The book was published in Spanish in 2010, the same year that Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.  The OPL has the 2012 English translation.”

Harold Erlendson, our movie critic, reports on To Rome with Love “If you enjoyed Midnight in Paris, you will enjoy this movie. Both were written and directed by Woody Allen. It is a collection of stories with no commonality except that they all take place inRome. The stories are about love and relationships. As in all farces, the characters are exaggerated who become involved in highly unlikely situations. My favorite character is a mortician who is a gifted tenor (played by Fabio Armiliato) who can only sing well while showering. He actually does sing “Pagliacci” on the opera stage while he is showering and gets a standing ovation. The movie is unabashedly sweet and I was caught up in the music and the golden city ofRome. It ends with a scene on the Spanish Steps and a huge band playing “That’s Amore”. While it is well acted and filmed it is unlikely to win an Oscar for best film, but both Theresa and I loved it.