Sunday Salon: Camino de Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Currently Reading

Pilgrimage through Northern Spain  to Santiago de Compostela

The Way is a River of Stars: A Buddhist's Journey, a travel memoir by Helen Burns.

 Pilgrimages have been made since medieval times from east to west across Northern Spain on the Camino Way, a path of some 500 miles trekked in honor of Saint James the Great, one of the twelve apostles.

His tomb and relics are in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the goal of pilgrims on the path. The cathedral  has been named a UNESCO world heritage site.

‘Just as I walked from Roncesvalles to Santiago de Compostela - a different woman now to the one who began - I also traveled from one religion to another. Perhaps I put on pilgrim boots to better understand the message of each - the verbs of their prayers - what it means to engage with life, the joys of aloneness and the delights of company.’ (Helen Burns)

Call of the Camino: A Novel by Suzanne Redfearn, Oct. 25, 2025,  Lake Union Publishing, NetGalley. Not yet published

Book description: Reina Watkins lost her father when she was eight. Seventeen years later, she still carries that grief. Her budding journalism career leads her to the ancient five-hundred-mile Camino de Santiago in Spain. Now she finds herself embarking on the same pilgrimage that her father made at her age, unaware of how profoundly it will change her. A parallel story, set some 15 years earlier, has young Isabel running for her life from her Spanish village, finding hope and safety on the pilgrimage's Camino Way.

I am reading both books interchangeably and not getting confused, as the first is a travel memoir and the other, a novel. I found out about the Camino  de Santiago many years too late to try to attempt it, but it would have been a walking experience that I would just loved. The challenge and the meeting of people from all over the world would have added to the  idea of making that pilgrimage.

Anyway, that's what books are for! Armchair travel and experiences! 

The Winners by Fredrik Backman, Jan. 1, 2022; Simon & Schuster, NetGalley. 

 I found this in my TBR pile, and though I've not read the first two books in the award-winning Beartown series, I'm sure the stories of the residents there can be read as a stand alone work. Have you read any in the series? 

 

 What are you reading, watching, or listening to this week? 

Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday, Book Blogger Hop