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"Moussaka to My Ears," and its prequel "Feta Compli!," are the two books John Manuel has written so far. Both have been receiving very positive reviews (see below).
Please check out the author's blog here: http://honorarygreek.blogspot.com/
...and John's profile on Author's Den: http://www.authorsden.com/johnpmanuel.
John now also has a new presence on opensalon.com. which he will try and develop with time. But it's already started and can be found here:
http://open.salon.com/blog/honorarygreek
(The above are not live links, so please copy and paste the desired URL into your browser's URL window)
Both books are available through Amazon, source-able through their ISBN numbers, which appear on their respective lulu pages. Ordering through lulu is a little quicker, as they deliver within 10 days to a fortnight and their product quality is excellent. Or you can purchase directly from the author by going to his blog, the URL for which is above.
Both books have been very positively reviewed, so please click on either link below (in blue) to go to their main lulu page and scroll to the bottom to read them. A new review of Moussaka TME has appeared on its Amazon.com page, check it our by copying this link into your browser's address window:
http://www.amazon.com/Moussaka-My-Ears-john-manuel/product-reviews/1409267326/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
My mum's short, but very evocative childhood war memoir, "One in Ten" is newly published. Click on the link below (in blue) to go to its dedicated lulu page.
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Print: $20.73 How meeting a girl with a Greek mother in a smoky bar in Bath, UK, eventually led to living in Greece. Only it took the best part of 30 years! If you like lighthearted yet informative travel books, this is right up your street. Travel writing at its best. FETA recounts how the author and his wife drove from the UK to Rhodes with all they possessed in a white van, then set up home and began a new life. The book also contains plenty of amusing anecdotes from numerous visits to all parts of Greece over the space of three decades or more.
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Print: $21.75 John and his half-Greek wife Yvonne-Maria moved from the UK to Rhodes in 2005, the account of which was told in his first book, FETA COMPLI! MOUSSAKA takes up where FETA COMPLI! leaves off, with Yvonne and John settling into life on Rhodes and coming into contact with some great characters who live around them out there. Plus, there's another helping of reminiscences from past years and other parts of Greece and Europe in general; like the time when Yvonne was Miss August on a calendar that graced the walls of innumerable offices all across Germany after meeting a German businessman on a beach in Corfu. Then there's Manolis, the "Six Million Drachma Man," who climbs olive trees even though he only has one and a half legs! The "Lonely Goatherd" comes by, as does Kostas, the local who shows them which weeds are great to eat. Yvonne helps Greco-Turkish relations during an evening out on Samos and John reluctantly become the elephant man for a while.
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Disc: $9.99 a showcase of styles, with songs strong on lyrical content. With blues, reggae, jazz, dance and even a bit of pseudo-rap in there for good measure.
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Print: $10.81 A short but touching and insightful memoir from a senior who lived through the greatest war in human history. Her cheerful outlook on life is why she coped with some truly horrendous experiences and came through them with her personality unscathed.
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Regarding FETA COMPLI:
"This memoir/travel book is a slight but rollicking account of two love affairs; the first being an account of the writer’s happy marriage with his wife, Yvonne-Marie. The second is of their decades-long flirtation with the country of Greece, where her family originated. The first began as extremely circumspect flirtations, but ripened into courtship and finally commitment. And so did the second, but it just took slightly longer; about thirty years of family visits and treasured vacations in the Greek Islands before circumstances allowed John and Yvonne-Marie to pack up all their remaining worldly goods into a battered second/third/fourth hand Mitsubishi L300 van. They drove the trusty, rusty van across Europe, intending to take up residence in a partly finished duplex on the island of Rhodes, and thereby hangs the rest of this tale.
Most of “Feta Compli” is an episodic account, much tinged with nostalgia of how they got to that point. John was seduced by the eccentric and beguiling charms of Greece as he encountered them; erratic infrastructure, incomprehensible official authority, eccentric local characters, non-existent road signage, totally insane drivers and all. Many such local peculiarities drive long-term visitors or residents in Greece beyond the far edge of exasperation, but those who have come to love Greece madly and irrationally have a way being indulgent about such shortcomings.
To someone in love with a country, the shortcomings are small things, insignificant against those pure moments of pleasure in a marvelous view, a splendid evening at a taverna with friends, a day at a perfect beach, or an orange grove in bloom, and ancient stone-built villages baking in the sun, under a pure blue sky. Mr. Manuel writes vividly of these perfect moments; anyone who has visited Greece for long has similar mental souvenirs. These episodes are interspersed with accounts of misadventures with suspiciously decrepit rental vehicles, strangely scheduled inter-island ferries, erratic electrical service and hungry goats. He writes in a wry, self-deprecating style that is very engaging, although I would have liked to have heard rather less of how recent developments in mass tourism had spoiled Greece, and rather more about the challenges of finishing the house on Rhodes, and living there as a full-time resident.
The author does hint that another volume will deal with exactly that, which is to be eagerly anticipated. On the strength of this prelude, it will be like a mad combination of “A Year in Provence” and “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse”… set in Greece The only thing needed to make it perfect, would be to include a couple of recipes."
...Sgt. Mom, Blogger News Network. (Link: http://www.bloggernews.net/18819)
FETA COMPLI!
This is a delightful and thoughtfully-written account of the author's ever-growing love affair with Greece, occasioned by his having married a Greek girl and thrown himself heart and soul into understanding what is frequently quite a complex culture. This book is about rather more than just travel in the specific sense and John Manuel, like Peter Mayle, makes a genuine attempt to reveal what impels people like himself to take such an enthusiastic view of a chosen foreign field. Perseverance is the key note, and one instantly picks up on the way in which the marriage has been tried and tested, often in quite difficult circumstances, over the years, and has survived triumphantly. This good humoured and unflagging doggedness spills over into everything the author undertakes, and he writes with great wit and endearing self-deprecation about the trials and triumphs of his extended Greek idyll. This is travel writing at its best, a perceptive evocation of time, place and persons.
Regarding OFFICE JOB:
This is John's first music CD and is very strong on lyrics. It starts with an uptempo sparsely instrumented song about several blokes chasing the same girl (Human Race) then lapses into a bit of laid back blues in the shape of Office Job, the title track. Aftermath takes us into electro-pop country with a vocal that gives more than a cursory nod in the direction of Leonard Cohen. There's a Heart is a slow Country-Blues rock grind rather in the J.J. Cale region and that's followed by the dub-reggae song Burning Box. Unknown to the Fool is an acoustic ballad about battered wives and ought to be adopted as an anthem by those who work to help such unfortunate women. It's written almost as an apology on the part of the male sex for what some of their number inflict on their partners. The first version of Don't Push me 'Round is a smokey jazzy slow shuffle and then things go decidedly uptempo with the "almost rapped" Your Wondrous Smile. A fast dance groove with lots of latin percussion follows in My Master and you hardly get your breath as New Suit's funky bass-line eases you into a foot-tapping Prince type thing. The second version of Don't Push me "round is a one-take recording of the band John was in once and it's very rock-based. Ritchie, the guitarist here is a big Bon Jovi fan and it shows!!
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