Bruno Blog

Japan is trending. Who visits the country of the rising Sun wants to go back. The Japanese culture is more and more established among us, from the restaurants and the food, to the Zen philosophy, which we can read in the Francesc Miralles’ latest books such as ICHIGO ICHIE, a phrase that heads the traditional Japanese tea shops and which means “live each instant as if it were unique”. Or the international bestseller IKIGAI, written also with Héctor Garcia, and already translated into 55 languages and it won’t stop.

Francesc surprises us, again, with the first young adult novel settled in Japan: SAKURA LOVE. An amazing, intimate and beautiful story that you will read in one seat, and that will leave you with a good taste in your mouth. You will fall in love with this reading, wishing it never ends because it evokes friendship and the power of love while you discover the most emblematic places of Japan, but also the secret ones.

I think this novel is Francesc in its purest form, a young adult book written from the heart and told from the soul. An inspiring story of love and self-awareness exploring one of the most exotic and trendy places. A novel addressed to the young ones but that will also seduce the adults.

Summer is over and most people want to start a diet, because the excesses of the month of August are noticeable: those jeans from the last fall don’t fit me anymore, my shirt is tight and you don’t look good yourself. The struggle of the kilos is for many a battle. I know it from experience. It is true that when you have gained certain kilos you feel that you have to start a diet to lose them.

However, Magda Carlas has always been a doctor and dietician who has given us tips to lose weight without being dramatic. And what’s better: when you go too far, you will know how to prevent yourself from gaining too many kilos, which then are difficult to lose again, even more when you’re old enough. This new manual, THE DIET CAN WAIT, helps us with easy tricks on how we should eat so that those excesses we all have in routine life do not make us gain a lot of weight.

Eating well and healthy, even if there are days that we overeat, we can maintain the weight in which we feel comfortable, the weight that is healthy for everyone. There is no ideal weight but a healthy weight, and with little tricks we can maintain it without having to do some barbarities that we read in magazines or social media.

Therefore, it is no longer about going on a diet but to eat in an intelligent and healthy way, and without spending months without being able to enjoy a good dinner with friends or a special weekend where the food is the center of attention.

Magda does not publish another book about diets but the opposite: she publishes very useful books to learn how to eat well and not have to live on a diet constantly.

The publishing world is attractive. People who don’t work there often ask you questions about the authors and the processes. Eyes from outside are always curious, and they believe that the world of literature is glamorous. I am not saying is not that way but only at very specific moments, because the reality, the day-to-day, are made of another kind of moments. 

Every day, it is increasingly difficult to find an editor who does not have to work as a manager and a thousand other things that would not be typical of his job. Therefore, the figure of the classic editor has disappeared. Consequently, we have also lost the love for a story, for a character.

Obviously, this is still a business, but it must also be a passion: it has to lead us to want to find those books that will steal the hearts of our readers. Many times I think that it is more and more complicated to do this, but it is the most beautiful thing about this job. Without leaving mathematics aside, because we cannot be naive or reckless, we should be able to equilibrate the balance so that letters are more important than numbers.

The novel EL ABISMO (the abysm) by Carla Gràcia is about the crisis of a writer who, after a huge success, has no more ideas, which can happen because the level of demand is always higher on the part of the publisher and the public, and many writers feel vertigo. In addition, the main character come from nowhere, from a complicated childhood, a mother who abandons him when he’s a young boy. After his literary success, Octavi getmanages to live well in a flat in Barcelona but he is unhappy, as his marriage and family collapse.

Octavi Fonseca has run out of ideas and his editor suggests him to take the idea of an unknown author. At this very moment that this dilemma makes him live badly, two policemen show up in his house to announce that his mother, with whom he had no relationship, has appeared dead and with a message for him.

A novel with a noir plot that raises the case of plagiarism as a tool to talk about how we are influenced by where we come from. About the literary creation and its complicated web, and how the strongest people always try to take advantage of the weakest. An impeccable narration that consolidates an author with a bright future. Without any doubt, one of the agency’s bets for this autumn, which is full of interesting voices, fresh and different.

Literary life never stops. Books always accompany us. But this autumn comes strong with one of the authors I admire the most, for her simplicity, humility and patience. Three great virtues that, if one wants to devote oneself to writing, I believe are fundamental. However, Susana Rodriguez, like a good ant, in silence and working together with the agency, has managed to sell more than 40,000 copies of her trilogy, which is still on the market and I hope soon with film options.

Now, she publishes a new novel, A BULLET WITH YOUR NAME ON IT, by the hand of Harper Collins Ibérica who has bet on this voice that has captivated a lot of readers, one by one, and that is going to consolidate them with this new novel that has taken off like a torpedo.

Zoe Bennett has an anodyne and routine life. In her forties, she is a serious woman, lonely and with a sad past, who takes refuge in her work as a restaurateur in the prestigious Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In a boring party for donations, she meets Noah, an attractive young waiter with whom, almost without realizing it, she starts a crazy, torrid relationship. Too handsome to be true? That’s what it looks like.

One night, Noah convinces her to visit the restoration workshop when the museum has closed its doors. Hours later, the tranquility of her life explodes in a thousand pieces to become a dangerous whirlwind of greed and violence where she will not be able to trust anything or anyone and that will awaken in her some instincts and a force of will unknown until then.
 
Again, a strong woman, love and violence make the perfect cocktail to keep adding sales to Susana’s track record. Great book to start the fall, indeed.

I am very thrilled to start my return to work with a new author of the agency, Berta Jardí, with a short but fascinating novel that tells us the story of the Joan Miró painting, the Portrait of Heriberto Casany. From her family memories, the author draws the life of her grandmother’s brother, the main character of the book: Heriberto Casany. A witness marked by the history of the 1930s, but above all, by his friendship with Joan Miró. The portrait he painted was meant to immortalize him and this story reminds us how extraordinary a plain life can be, something that made me fall more in love with this well written book. Art and literature merge together, two  different worlds but with obvious parallelisms.

Berta also inaugurates publisher label, UNIVERS, that belongs to Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana, with the great publisher Esther Pujol. The new house has the aim to give voice to writers like Berta Jardí, writers who have already started a career, and help them to consolidate it. Berta is a writer that deserves it without any doubt. This Sunday begins the Catalan Books Week in Barcelona and it’s a great opportunity for the readers to get to know Berta Jardí and other Catalan authors of the agency. It is indeed the perfect plan for the weekend to discover the new voices of the Catalan literature.