Bruno Blog

One of the best days of the year is just around the corner, Sant Jordi, and I must admit those who work in this market are pretty busy- before, during and after-. I must also admit I don’t know anyone of this Publishing world who doesn’t adore this day, who doesn’t have butterflies in the stomach when waking up, who doesn’t smile, who doesn’t feel the excitement about a day in which books themselves are the main characters.

I love waking up early, getting to see how roses and books stands are built, with that characteristic excitement of the day. To smell my wonderful city, Barcelona, all dressed up ready to celebrate. Our party. This year, the Agency will have a stand in the neighborhood where we will go on with our Charity Campaign LA LITERATURA ALIMENTA, and where we will be delighted to recommend the best book for that special person you want to surprise.

This blog has already dealt with many news which are already on sale and we hope reach the top. This year we have a special book, special for the date, a book which Comanegra has amazingly published, as everything they do. Silvia Tarragó is the author of the story, a modern Sant Jordi, in which love and books are the main characters, an amazing detail for all of those who think of books as the best present in the world. A plot in which a Jordi does not enjoy reading at all, but Anna -book fan- will make him fall in love with books… as they fall in love with each other. Simple, short, well developed. It is, with no doubt, the best present for reading lovers, for those who believe in love and those who love Sant Jordi. You should have a book like this one, you must.

They say a picture is word a thousand words, I don’t completely agree, but for those who agree, here we attach our special video for Sant Jordi, full of pictures and words which speak out for themselves. Have an amazing Sant Jordi, and keep on reading, because without books, we would not be what we are.

Today is the first day of holidays for the kids. Summer is here. I’ve got such good memories of my childhood summers: together with my siblings, on the beach and on the mountain with my parents and grandparents. We’ve always been a family that has enjoyed doing things together, and as I’ve got unique grandpas and grandmas who have always wanted to spend these times with us, I remember fondly the first two weeks of August in Sant Pol. I still go on holidays there, and I remember eating altogether in a large table from one of those hotels of this fantastic Maresme’s town. We shared the beach, meals, and a terrace in front of the sea, where we spoke, despite being teenagers, with all the grown-ups at the table. We lived fantastic and unique moments, unforgettable to me. When I’m there and I breath the smell of the sea, these fond and happy memories come to me. I’ve got plenty of them, and I keep them safe in my mind.

In the summer, we always went to the cinema or to the Tibidabo’s amusement park. If we went with our grandparents, we had to go by tram and the adventure was even greater. Even though I’ve never liked fairground rides, I must confess that Tibidabo was a nice park with charisma. When I read the latest novel by Sílvia Tarragó, T’HO DONARÉ TOT, published by Columna, I had these small moments of longing, and I also immersed myself in a story I didn’t know anything about -and I’ve loved learning about it. Who invested in this park? How did everything start? We’ve got the history of Tibidabo and its characters: two of the daughters of one of the workers from its urbanization in the first decades of the 20th century. On the background, there is a cosmopolitan and precocious Barcelona and, at the top of the cake, a story filled with love, intrigue and drama.

This is the perfect novel for this summer, for those who want to be addicted to a novel where it’s told the history of one of the oldest amusement parks of the world (not only of Spain or Europe!), along with a great family fiction that will hook you from the first page. For any reader of SUEÑOS A MEDIDA and HABITACIONES CERRADAS, you should read Sílvia Tarragó if you haven’t discovered her yet. Hers is a strong feminine voice that steps on the gas pedal of the bumper car in order to get to a wider audience. They’re captivated by how well she combines history and fiction. Don’t miss it!

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.