#marchingpowder

Abv: 5.5%

Served: From the fridge

Aroma: Pine, slight peach and melon

Pour: Clear pale gold with white froth reducing to skim

Taste: Savage biting pine hit with dry rasping finish. Very little else going on though, no fruits or sweetness, very slight malt undertones. It does as advertised I guess but a bit one dimensional.

As this is my first text post let me start off by saying 'hey' to you guys - the followers - there may not be many of you but I don't care about that (Ever heard of the saying "quality over quantity" people? Haha). Thanks for following me and I hope I am keeping you entertained.

So as the title suggests I read a book... This is not the first book I have read just so you know. In fact I have read many books, hundreds even (no I am not exaggerating) but this is one I have just finished and feel like mentioning. It was an biography called Marching Powder... Anybody heard of it? No? Anybody heard of San Pedro Prison in Bolivia? No?

Well San Pedro Prison is basically a prison run by the prisoners - no I am not joking! -basically the guards watch the walls but what happens inside the walls is not their business. There are shops and restaurants in the prison and prisoners wives and children live there with their husbands.

Additionally this prison also offers tours of the prison - again I am not joking my friend has taken the tour and if you don't believe me look it up in The Lonely Planet!This book is about the man who established these tours, Englishman Thomas McFadden, and his life behind this walls.

I am just going to go ahead and say this book was amazing! I mean this prison is insane! Crazy, crazy, crazy! I know when my friend said to read this biography I baulked... Biographies can be so boring! Just fact after fact after fact after fact after... You get the picture. Well this was not that! This read like a great non-fiction book except it was all true (if slightly exaggerated but who knows!)

I mean the stuff that happened in that prison in the four or so years over which this book was set is just... Sigh... No word can be found to describe it effectively... And I don't want to give too much away...

...So if anyone is bored and looking for a read pick up Marching Powder by Rusty Young. It has amazing reviews (and I am not just talking about mine :P)...

FHM wrote "Awesome. Astonishing real-life story of a Brit drug smuggler banged up in Bolivia's most notorious jail. Another world seen through the terrified eyes of a likeable Englishman" before giving it 5 STARS!

The Sunday Telegraph wrote "All the staples of the prison memoir are here: sadistic guards, an attempted break-out, the terrors of solitary confinement, the joys of freedom... The result is a truly gripping piece of testimony"