Bruno Blog

This Tuesday was the presentation of the book EL HOMBRE MÁS RICO DEL MUNDO (The Richest Man in the World) by Rafael Vídac, author of the agency since not too long ago, and therefore I was thrilled to go to his premiere; to his debut, for which I’ve done my bit to help. And the truth is that I was pleasantly surprised with the number of people Rafael was able to summon, we all know that presentations are difficult right now and filling a room is difficult, but almost finishing with all the books in the bookstore that same day, is almost more difficult, and the stand in Casa del Libro was starting to empty. All his followers were there unconditionally, and maybe they bought more than one because this is one of those novels that are perfect to give as a gift to someone who wants to exceed, who gets excited, who feels.

So the beginning was really extraordinary. The truth is that the book is worth it, prefaced by Álex Rovira, it’s an “inspirational” book from which -when I was reading it- I couldn’t stop underlining sentences, and I say that I wasn’t the only one, because one person who was there confessed. People are very emotional creatures, and if we’re not alright emotionally, everything else doesn’t work. That I’ve been sure about for quite a while, but my question is always the same. What should I do so my emotional deposit doesn’t empty out? Rafael gave us a lot of clues in his speech, and reading this good novel you start a path next to the characters, from who, without wanting to, you learn how to apply a “good” philosophy to your daily life. Nicolás, the main character, could be any of us, because he’s lost his job in the middle of the worst crisis in his life, but he gets an unbelievable offer that nobody has given him before: to work for the powerful business group owned by Daniel Weelock, one of the richest people on the planet. Nevertheless, he’ll have to get over a strange personal preparation process  first, with the eccentric and charismatic billionaire. Throughout a long unpredictable trip that he’ll never forget, Nicolas will transform his body, will heal his forgotten wounds from the past and will start to be aware of the true potential in his own mind. Everything will change forever. Daniel is a lighthouse for Nicolas who will make him see, what he refused to see or couldn’t recognize.

To me, richness, in the shape of money, has never been what moved me in life. We have to make money to live, because the capitalist society has been built this way, but being truly rich means something else to me. I’m really rich when I feel fully happy, and I’m content with what I do. And to me the lottery I won with my family, is unbeatable, and being able to work with them in something that I love, books. There are always moments in which that emotional warehouse is low, because human beings are almost never sure that everything is going well.  It happens to me often, and when one thing doesn’t go wrong, it’s the other, and it’s complicated to know how to handle these emotions and balance them, it’s part of the learning experience in life, the same way you have to take care of yourself so your emotional strength doesn’t go down.

Being The Richest Man or Woman in the World is only up to you and of knowing how to answer one question: WHAT DO I WANT IN MY LIFE? Check and you’ll see that maybe a lot of you don’t know the answer. Reading this novel will certainly help you, and it will help you achieve a goal and take control of the gears in your life. We all can do it, we just have to try.

Some of us want to believe that LOVE can save a lot of things. I’ve always thought that love has a lot of shapes, there are different ways of loving, but with love, you can achieve your goals. People who believe that giving love to others, they make the world better, I think they’re completely right. Nevertheless, the human race is so selfish that hardly anyone shows love without asking for something in exchange, and in the end that’s what makes LOVE in big letters fail in some occasions. Giving without receiving is love in its purest state, but let’s think of who really applies it to their daily life, every day. Do we?

Care Santos, in her trilogy Eblus (Ediciones B in Spanish), shows us that love is the only thing that stops the worst and most dangerous creature in history. The devil himself will run into something he wasn’t expecting: love. Natalia will be the only obstacle that he’ll find in his long trail of evil, and his obsession with her will end up driving him crazy. Will love beat evil? A historic battle that Care Santos forcefully throws into the ring so nobody will want to stop reading this trilogy that will show us a family’s curse, which will scar the lives of the Albás’ families, and of which they don’t know how to escape. The truth of the curse is only known by Eblus, a devil who doesn’t forget nor forgive, but who’s more human than he wants to confess in some things. Care publishes three excellent novels once again, majestic, and in which there’s a lot of reflection wrapped in adventure. An A+ for this author, who doesn’t stop surprising us, and who made me think that there may be a lot like Eblus in our society, but that we can beat them if we want. Me, I do. And you?

Longing is an emotion, a feeling, which I’m sure we’ve all felt sometime. In my case it mixes with the nostalgia of the things I no longer have, and especially of past times, where my memories are of feeling good, of complete happiness. I miss the summers with my grandparents, who are no longer here, the meals with family when everyone showed up and the table was filled with food mixed with hope. The Friday dinners, and the weekends, with my siblings and my parents when we ate the pizza slices from a little shop at Roger de Flor Street, and it was our weekly feast, while we watched the show Un, Dos, Tres together.

All these nostalgic memories, and many more which I could talk about until you got bored, but if I continue, I might get emotional; they have been awoken after reading a novel like EL TIEMPO DE LA LUZ, by Silvia Tarragó, published by Umbriel in Spanish and by Columna in Catalán.

Silvia Tarragó, the author, is able to transport us to 1940, the inauguration of the first subterranean galleries in Europe, the luxurious Avenida de la Luz, in the Barcelona of the postwar. Julia is the main character and she will be witness to the evolution of the gallery and the different traders that make it up. Rosita, the daughter of the bakers, who lived her first love with the attendant at the cinema inside the galleries.  A strange lady who will open a typewriter store (remember the Olivettis?), a perfume seller who’s involved with men in the regime, and a railway worker who’s a poet. We’ll see how these characters’ stories grow and intertwine; building an underworld filled with passion and hatred, but that keeps changing, decade after decade, feeling the exciting beat of Barcelona of the postwar, until the end of the eighties. A coral novel, where Barcelona is the background curtain again, but in which human relationships and love, are the main core to explain a period of new beginnings, and the spirit of the traders after a tough war. Another novel for all those who like to taste their memories and share them, which you can read quickly and leaves you wanting more.

There are moments when you would like to be able to say STOP, to pause time, because everything is happening too fast and, lately, I feel like I can’t enjoy anything. The weeks fly by, they’re intense, luckily I like my job and it completes me, I love my family and my friends, but I would like to have more time to be with them. This feeling of time slipping from my hands, of making a list every day, a long one, of things I should do, and getting less than half done, gives me a feeling of unease that I don’t know how to handle sometimes, and I’m lucky to have been able to read a novel that, without meaning to, gave me harmony and peace.

Reading ALOHA, UN VIAJE AL ENCUENTRO DE TU PROPIO PARAÍSO, I was able to enjoy sceneries, situations the character lives, which I’ve felt or lived, or if not I’ve shared with friends. Alma chooses a path and she dares to follow it because she reaches that moment of dismay, of STOP. However, she depends on things, she has fears, like we all do, and thanks to an old Hawaiian tradition she discovers new ways of living. Along with a woman shaman, she will discover how to heal through the forces of nature, that will show their darkest aspects and how she can change them herself. A magical and internal journey and an extraordinary trip to Honolulu that leaves you with a good impression and some things to think about, so this STOP that sometimes paralyzes us turns into an I WANT MORE, because what I have is a gift and I want to enjoy it at its most.

A read for both men and women, we all have our role, in the novel, and in life, and knowing how to listen to ourselves is to move forward.

Meeting Nadia Ghulam changed my life a little, I confess. It’s been a few years since the first time I saw those powerful black eyes, though a bit untrusting, come in through the door of the agency to explain, with Agnès Rotger, a story that captivated me, and that later on won the Prudenci Bertana award, in the shape of a novel called EL SECRET DEL MEU TURBANT. Through Nadia’s real story, after her father’s sickness and the death of her brother, who she pretended to be in order to support her family, with all that entails in a country at war like Afghanistan, I met a brave, intelligent girl, with half of her face burnt by the explosion of a bomb in her own home, and that was able to keep going, with help from her mother, wo was always with her, and supporting her family. She arrives to Catalonia with an adoptive family, who she also adores, to keep on fighting from a country where we allow a lot of things that are forbidden in Afghanistan, and that way be able to get an education and to fight against the injustice that exists in her hometown.

Entering her life also made me think of a lot of things, and even though Nadia is one of the best people I know, she has a hard time letting anyone enter her world; but once we were able to feel that click it’s been an unforgettable experience, and having her near me always gives me positive energy. Nevertheless, Nadia, who’s very well adapted to our country, leaves the women of her family behind, and also half of her heart, because even though se adapts, she even learns Catalan, and loves her adoptive family so much; her birth family, especially her mother, her cousins and her aunts are still in Afghanistan, fighting to break with the conventions, trying to make things change. Like Nadia says, they are the brave ones and she tells us about it in her second novel, written with Javier Diéguez, a historian and writer; LA PRIMERA ESTRELLA DE LA NOCHE, published by Penguin Random House, in Catalan and Spanish, where they explain how Nadia went back to Afghanistan, how she tried to find her cousin Mersal, and how she wants to pay tribute to her deceased aunt. This novel becomes the discovery of the hidden story of the women in her family, as well as her roots, and herself as a woman, after having spent 10 years as a man in her land.

It’s a touching, intense and sincere tale, about the reality of women in societies so far from ours: how they get over adversity and they don’t stay impassive when facing a destiny that they seem to have to accept with no complaints. We’re in the XXI century and many of them know, and have to fight to make things different, even if it’s hard. Nadia is an example to them, but also to us, or at least to me. As I said, meeting Nadia made me think of a lot of things, and I saw that what we have here is a life of luxury, which we shouldn’t complain about, but be grateful; but also, it’s been an honor to have Nadia as a friend, because she’s special in every way, and one of the people with the clearest ideas that’s ever stood before me, and without wanting to, her honesty, sometimes very straight forward, has helped me see life from another perspective, and I can only thank her for that and tell her to keep being like this, to not let anything or anyone change her because when you grow up, you lose strength, maybe you think that a lot of things aren’t worth it, and it shouldn’t be that way, the spirit of fighting for what you want should stay alive forever. And that’s why I recommend this last novel, and the first one, if you haven’t already read it, because Nadia is a lesson of love, courage and life. And both novels will give us a GREAT story that makes its mark.