Bruno Blog

This week I’m talking about a book that has touched my soul because I felt many times like Mara. I have never been thin, and I was a fat person who did not accept herself. I didn’t know how to dress to go to the fair in Frankfurt to sell rights from our books because I couldn’t find clothes in my size, and the ones I did find were really terrible. Luckily, nowadays, this has changed a bit, but in my teens it was a real problem (or for me it was at tha time) and the same anxiety I suffered, made me eat more and more.

Mara’s book is honest because she explains her truth, what she suffered and the consequences that led her to have zero self-esteem. However, this is a positive book because, just like the phoenix she rose again, healed and found light in a dark world. In Acepta y vuela, Mara Jimenez (also known as @croquetamente__) explains how she went from hating herself to loving herself beyond measure and that accepting herself was the first step towards her freedom. Many of you are surely already following heron social media, where she has that charisma, good humor and speaks loud and clear, with more than 386,000 followers, but reading her is such a pleasure that I can’t stop recommending you this book: you will empathize with her voice, which is totally hers. We were surprised by Mara’s talent in writing, as it is one thing to talk, which is also a gift, and the other one is to put those feelings on paper and to be able, with words, to help many people to accept themselves and to be happy. Thank you, Mara, for sharing it so beautifully and, hopefully, many people will fly with you. A book like yours would have helped me many years ago, that’s why I think it is important that it reaches as many people as possible because we are no longer talking about being fat or skinny, but about loving yourself, accepting yourself and learning to live without depending on what others think. A great lesson of life and love.

I have never agreed with the headline of this blog, because I have always preferred to be accompanied and surrounded by my loved ones. I have always been quite dependent and loneliness scared me, but as time has gone by, I have learned that learning to enjoy solitude is a precious commodity, and that doing so is a luxury.

We all need moments to be alone, with ourselves, and the cliché that those who are alone do not enjoy life must be banished. This book invites you to take control of your destiny without making it depend on anything other than your decisions and choices. The key is solosofía, the art of feeling fulfilled alone, celebrate the choice of owning your time and your space!

Live in connection with your essence, in line with your principles and values, your needs and your feelings, respecting and caring for yourself with kindness and affection. To develop the art of solosofía you must learn to live in the present, and to do so with all five senses. Nika Vázquez accompanies you in this process in which you will learn that being alone is not the same as feeling alone, on the contrary: it can be the key to happiness. I vote for being a SOLÓSOFA. How about you?

Carla Gracia is an author that I love;she writes wonderfully well, and when she was asked to write the biography of Mercè Pàniker, she didn’t hesitate at all because she has always admired his woman’s  life and work… Mercè Pàniker deserved a biography written by a masterful pen, with a thorough research and a sweet forcefulness to  make you fall in love with it, and who better than Carla Gracia to do so?

Pàniker was a woman ahead of her time, an innovator who was made invisible by her own family. The daughter of an Indian father and a Catalan mother, she grew up in Barcelona in the twenties and spent her teenage years in a boarding school in the Nazi Germany, which she left at the outbreak of World War II.

She studied chemistry at the University of Barcelona and later, a master’s degree at the University of Leeds, where she was enrolled with only four women among more than twenty men. She was often the only woman in a world of men but she was always brave; she faced everyone in her way, without excuses and without asking for permission. When she returned to Barcelona, she took over the family business —Paniker S.A., a gluing company — and promoted a very strong network within the chemical industry. Her husband died suddenly and she had to raise her four children alone. With the arrival of democracy, she became involved in the defense of women’s freedom and equality.

I do not read biographies often, but this one is worthy, because, when we talk about women who have been a reference, the same ones always come to our minds. Mercè Pàniker should be known as a brave woman, activist and with an emblematic family, with two philosopher brothers and always linked to culture. Thank you, Carla for this magnificent book and for being a loudspeaker of an extraordinary woman as Mercè Pàniker was.

Many books have been written about happiness and how to achieve it. The day Francesc Miralles and Álex Rovira spoke about happiness in a book which turned to be a bestseller, we “opened” a small window to ask ourselves whether happiness is inherent to human beings, if it is something to be built day by day, or if it is shaped by different factors s in  our lifes.

Álex Rovira said: “Happiness is about having small moments of joy”; I think this is totally true;  these tiny experiences are the ones that make us feel good and  all of them together can  lead us directly to happiness. If happiness was meant to be explained in mathematical terms —which is not the case— we could say that: Joy + Laughter = Happiness. For this reason, when Imma sent me her project Reír y vivir, published by Ediciones Cúpula, I thought: “that is exactly what we are missing: WE HAVE TO LAUGH MORE, since this is a tool we have in our lives so we can feel good”.

Have you ever thought about how many times you laugh a week? Have you counted how many times you smile? It’s a very good personal analysis because laughter awakens your inner joy. As Oscar Wilde said: “Life is too important to be taken seriously”. Imma Rabasco says that laughter is a gift that reconnects us with our essence and, therefore, laughter is life. This book is dedicated to all those who, for different reasons, have had to hide their natural joy and currently cannot find the key to recover it. The good news is that this joy is still there and deserves to arise to the surface to fill up the world with love. The beaming author of this book (who doesn’t take herself seriously) teaches us that a sense of humor, laughter and smiles are the three pillars of joy that we should all include in our lives to achieve what we all want: happiness.

How is it done? This book hides the formula, not mathematical, to reach that destination. Life flies by; and the sooner you know how to achieve happiness, the better.

I’m sure that almost all the people who read this blog have children, nieces, nephews or kids around and most certainly, one of the Disney movies that you have seen at some point is Mulan. Of all the ones Disney has produced, perhaps this was the one I was least in the mood to see, but I must confess that I liked it.

For those who haven’t seen it, Mulan is about a brave girl who, to help her family, pretends to be a man to go fight in the war. What I didn’t know at that time is that there was a Spanish Mulan from Leon.

In La doncella guerrera, Teresa Sagrera, one of the most outstanding writers in historical narrative right now, places us in the year 1475, in Arintero. Barely a month had passed since Henry IV died but, on a Sunday in January, men were called to war. The throne was disputed between his only daughter and the future Catholic Monarchs, Isabel and Fernando. The lands of Castilla then became the battlefield that would forever change the destiny of the kingdom. When the Count of Arintero received the news, his health no longer allowed him to fight. However, one of his daughters, the young Juana, decided to represent her family in the battle. She embarked on an epic adventure, full of intrigue and passion, in which she fought for the crown and avoided being discovered, as well as dodging (or not) love.

In this novel, based on an old Leonese ballad, Teresa Sagrera will captivate the reader with a war story that pretends to be a hymn of peace. This is the story of a warrior who had to hide under her armor to save her kingdom, honor her family and become a legend.

The Spanish Mulan will make readers of historical novels fall in love with her because the novel has all the ingredients for fans of the genre to give it a very high rating.