Rosie’s Avid Readers #RBRT The Singing Bowl by Roy Dimond

Rosie’s Avid readers are people who like reading and have a book to tell us about, they are the voice of a friend who says ” I just read this book….”

Today’s book on the Avid reader theme has previously been read and reviewed by me as an e-book. http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-50f I really enjoyed the book, connecting with it in a big way and I wanted to share my experience with some of my regular avid readers who prefer a paperback, so I bought a copy to share with others.

The Singing Bowl was also featured on Day 3 of our Mystery November Tour http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-5LU

The Singing Bowl – Roy Dimond

The Singing Bowl   by Roy Dimond. Avid Reader’s thoughts

 

The tale of a Monk who travels from Tibet to British Columbia via Pakistan Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt & Santorini to name but a few. His preferred method of travel is on foot, while he goes in search of a Long Lost Book.  What is that book? There is a mystery in the book and where it will be found. Our Monk searches over many years failing to find anything material but what is found is the very meaningful way love, peace & understanding can be found between all races & religions. Through-out the years of travel there is meditation & even very deep meditation sometimes in groups often looking back & forth in time. An extremely readable & thought provoking book of travel, adventure and mind searching.

Book Description

A Tibetan monk embarks on a journey of a lifetime, filled with harrowing dangers and strange mysteries. His quest is to find a lost book and save an ancient way of life. Under attack from Chinese Communists, a monk traveling the wilds of Tibet is given a daunting task – to bring a way of life back from the brink. That’s the spellbinding journey revealed in Roy Dimond’s new, action-packed adventure tale. Given an ancient artifact from his monastery, the sacred Singing Bowl, the young monk heads out on a trek to find a lost book and reunite a broken circle to keep his centuries-old civilization alive. Join the intrepid monk as he: # Finds the love of his life in exotic Katmandu. # Links up in Egypt with the Old Woman of Alexandria. # Meets the strange Mexican Carlos at the wondrous Machu Picchu. # Encounters a wise student of Mahatma Gandhi called the Librarian. # Learns the precious secrets of the Navajo Indians. # Meets Albert Einstein’s boyhood friend. And lives many more incredible adventures in The Singing Bowl, a riveting new book in which the traveling monk and all of us learn that the true meaning of any quest is wrapped within the experience itself.

Find a copy of The Singing Bowl from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

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Mystery Book Tour Day 3 #MysteryNovember The Singing Bowl by Roy Dimond

 

Please welcome Roy Dimond to the mystery book tour with his book The Singing Bowl

 

Where is your hometown? 

Garden Bay, British Columbia, Canada. It’s a small fishing village on the west coast, a lovely little harbor with wonderful people.

How long have you been writing?  

About 12 years. I started decades earlier, but just wasn’t ready. I think writers mature very much like a fine wine… or maybe that should read writers mature only after drinking many a fine wine?

Tell us about the start of The Singing Bowl and what the main character must search for.  

The Singing Bowl begins in Tibet just after the communist Chinese have taken over. The story is set in a remote village called Sakya where the monastery is being disbanded. Each follower is given an artifact from the monastery as well as a quest. The main character is given the most important artifact, a singing bowl, and is told to, “Find a book lost to the world.”

What are the elements of mystery in the book?  

Like all good mysteries, the protagonist, a monk, is sent on a journey of discovery. Over time, he learns that his quest to find a lost book is very much like a Japanese koan. It is more about the journey than it is about finding a solution. In his travels through bookstores and such mystical places as the Khyber Pass, Samarkand, Nag Hammadi, and Machu Picchu he discovers that it is really about the people he meets along the way. The Sufi, The Old Woman of Alexandria, The Librarian, The Raven Haired Woman and many others are just some of the intriguing characters that he learns from as he travels the world.

Where is the first main city that the Monk travels to? Who does he meet there?    

Katmandu in Nepal, where he meets the love of his life, Dorje, a mysterious woman wise beyond her years. As well as Little Brother, a behemoth of a man whose appetite is only surpassed by his kindness. It is here where he realizes Chinese agents, minions of chaos, follow him and mean to stop him from fulfilling his quest.

The monk travels to 3 parts of the world, what are they?  

The Ancient World… where his travels take him from Sakya to Katmandu, to Peshawar, to the Kara-Kum Desert, to Istanbul and many other fascinating places. The Old World… where his quest continues to Vienna, Interlaken, Florence and Berlin just to name a few. Then finally the New World… where he looks for the book lost to the world in such places as Arequipa, Ixtlan, Las Vegas, and Vancouver.

What type of establishments does he search to find the lost book?  

His journey takes him from the most common and quaint bookstores in the world to some of the finest universities ever created. From bookstores owned by the Medici family to ruins shown to him by Carlos Castaneda, where secret tunnels and caves reveal clues to solving his mystery.

How does the monk travel without a passport?

Tell us some of the ways he crosses borders.   In the Ancient World, borders between states are somewhat fluid. Along the Hindu Kush, Pamir Plateau, and Silk Road even today, people cross borders without even realizing they have. In the Old and New World where borders are fixed, he has many who will secretly help him, including other monks disbanded from his old monastery in Sakya. Still more characters come to his aid, people who travel often between Mexico and America, others using old dilapidated bi-planes from another time who can find valleys and old goat trails to follow so that, so called, secure borders are easily circumvented.

Tell us what you are working on at the moment.  

My second book, The Rubicon Effect as well as my third book, Saving Our Pennys co authored with Jeff Leitch are both out in bookstores. I have a children’s illustrated book co authored with award winning writer David Ward called, Emma and the Big Bowl of Nonsense which should be out before Christmas and my new publisher, Untreed Reads is launching my novel, Silence and Circumstance this coming January. It is a novel about the eleven days that Agatha Christie went missing as told from the perspective of her Governess.

Where can readers find out more about you?  

Roy Dimond

Thank you Rosie for this opportunity. Great questions. My books are in all the regular places, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., as well as many brick and mortar stores. This site below shares many of my interviews, promotional videos, and hopefully some interesting information about me. Again, Rosie, thank you so much for your time…

http://roydimond.tripod.com/

http://greendragonbooks.com/

Find a copy of The Singing Bowl from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

I reviewed this book a while ago here is a link to my review http://wp.me/p2Eu3u-50f

Fantastic offer: This book will be available for e-readers at $1.99 direct from the publishers only 11/3-8/14 (3rd -8th November)

Here’s a link to the publisher’s ebooks on their site:

EPUB: http://greendragonbooks.com/the-singing-bowl-3.html

Kindles: http://greendragonbooks.com/the-singing-bowl-4.html

The Singing Bowl by Roy Dimond

The Singing Bowl by Roy Dimond

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Singing Bowl is an epic journey for mankind. It follows a Tibetan Monk as he searches the World for answers to a mystery and a long lost book. Forced to flee from invading Chinese Communists the monk is one of a religious group called The Gatherers, he begins by running for his life from Tibet and walking over the mountains to Nepal.

There are many people who will help and teach the monk along his journey and the author uses few names, instead he gives them identities which help form a distinct picture in the mind of the reader. For instance “The Wise Woman of Alexandria”, “The Nomad” and “Wife of Big Brother”. There are some wonderful characters and many have starring roles in the journey of the monk. He travels through The Ancient World, The Old World and The New World and in each world he has a lesson to learn from the people who make up that place.

The people he meets are also from all religions and they show their generosity when they help him and share their homes and food with him. He meets some of his fellow Gatherers who are on their own journeys and interacts with them before they each move on. It’s not all easy, the Communists search for the monk and want to stop and destroy him because of what he represents. Many times his life is at risk and he escapes because of some faithful friends.

I didn’t want the book to end although the Monk’s mystery was solved. My favourite part of the journey was from the Ancient World, I thought I was learning as much as the monk. I wanted to search the dusty book shops and sit for hours pouring over long lost books. I wanted to race through the book, not putting it down, but I also wanted to sit back and reflect on some of the parts that I had read, it really made me think about our World and if you choose to read this book I hope it makes you think as well.

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

View all my reviews on Goodreads