World Book Day

April 23rd is world book day. On La Palma, the celebrations go on all week. Both Santa Cruz and Los Llanos have book stalls out in the street. Last year, they had a 10% discount, although most of the books were in Spanish. Since I'm a book-a-holic, I loved it.

This year, they're having events to encourage people to come. Amoung other things, Callou (from the TV series) will be in Santa Cruz signing books all week, as are various adult authors. And the cowboy from Oregon, Leaping Louie will be doing his lasso/whip/comedy routine in Los Llanos (Monday 6pm, Plaza de España) and Santa Cruz (Tuesday, 6:30 pm, Plaza de España). And a group from El Hierro will be performing "a dance spectacular inthe street" called "The Garoé Tree". (The Sacred Garoé is a tree in El Heirro).

A fair few books are going to be "presented" which usually means the author reading part of the book, followed by nibbles and a chance to buy a signed copy. Los Sauces will stage a play, "El", in the Casa de Cultura on Tuesday at 8:30 pm, and Jackie Rios and Sis del Castillo wilol give a concert in Los Llanos on Wednesday at 6:30 int the Plaze de España.

I'm looking forward to this, especially if they have discounts again.

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Wild Flowers of the Canary Islands

My father was a professional botanist, and he went into ecstasies over the wild flowers on La Palma. He was even fascinated by the roadside weeds. You see, because it's an island, the plants evolved in isolation, and in many cases the plant on La Palma is a different sub-species from the plant in neighbouring Tenerife. For example, echium wildipretti is a very tall cone of tiny flowers. The sub-species on La Palma has blue flowers, but the one on Tenerife has pink ones.

Anyone keen on plants will want a book to identify them. This was my father's favourite. The catch is that it was published in 1974 and it's out of print, but Amazon currently has a couple of second hand copies of this edition.

I'll be quite honest. If you buy through this link, I get a small commission, but it doesn't cost you any more.

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