Bruno Blog

Sandra Bruna Literary Agency’s team wishes you happy holidays! We hope that this summer days will help you to relax and recover energy. Make the most of your time and take many pictures, but most importantly: be happy.

Always remember: reading a book is the best way to travel and to open your mind. So we hope you have a wonderful summer full of stories and unforgettable characters.

See you back on September, at our usual office hours and with full batteries. You can check our recommendations and our catalogs on our website.

It won’t be long now before our deserved rest starts. I won’t lie to you, I do want to go to the beach, to enjoy the sun and the paellas, to spend some moments and relaxed night chats with my friends, without having to worry about the time it is.

However, the final sprint is still to be done, it is actually the hardest one. These two last weeks are really the hardest on us because it’s hot and our minds are already thinking about the holidays… But we must make that one last effort. And readings can help us to make that pre-summer time struggle easier. A book is a great companion at all times: it helps you when you need it, it is with you when you travel, it airs you out when you’re going through a bad time, it wouldn’t leave you alone when you have to stay at home. Thousands of stories and different subjects that take you to new worlds, which force you to meet different characters and share parallel lives, that are generally exciting in every way, with them.

Here is our blog so that you can remember all the books we have been recommending during this first half of the year, and they all have a reader, I’m sure. Hopefully we can receive your comments, because one of them (or more than one) is your companion during this summer, wherever you are. Happy holidays and happy readings, we actually grow with them… I think and believe that reading is also living, so do not stay without air.

It’s not the first time that I recommend this book, and it won’t be the last, neither. AMOR EN MINÚSCULA is, for me, a very special book, a novel full of inspirational sentences that leave in me an indelible mark. It happens to be, also, a book translated into 23 languages, and Penguin Random House has just relaunched.

The first person that actually betted on this book was a great editor, Marisa Tonezzer, who saw the magic of this novel and brought it to light. She is one of the great persons and professionals in this little publishing world and I admire her since I met her, working in Atlántida. She also is, as well as a great worker and professional, a good friend. It is true that, in Spain, this book has not be very successful, unfortunately, but these things happen more than we, the professionals of this field, would like. However, AMOR EN MINÚSCULA, has been a bestseller in Germany and other countries that pushed for the novel.

During the past month of February, the book was launched in the United States of America and in June, with a very special editor for me too, Pablo Alvarez, who has always helped me and with whom I’ve always done great projects, we have also relaunched it in Spain. This relaunch, this second opportunity would deserve the best reward we can ask for concerning a good novel. And that would be that you, readers, would recommend this book yourselves, because those who have read it have also be captured by MISHIMA and SAMUEL, from which they have learned a lot, such as the pleasure of simple things give us is what really fills us. Of course that doesn’t mean, no matter what they can say, that life is easy or simple, but we have to live it. This is an urban novel appreciated by all its readers, so do not hesitate anymore: go and find that great hidden treasure.

Francesc Miralles, author of this novel, is recognized and admired by the professionals of this industry and also by his many followers and fans, but he is still the same person I met over 12 years ago. Behind his simplicity, he hides expertise, and very few persons can do that, when they have both.  You can now see that it is a story with history, inside the book and outside, so I invite you to help and make it bigger. Perfect novel for the summer and those who want to take advantage of the holidays break and make this reading help them grow.

The great world of the couple would make people talk a lot, and more to write too, because we have all been having dinner with friends and after-dinner conversations subject is the couple. Everyone has his particular vision and the way the topics are almost always repeated is kind of funny. The new generations seem quite different from our generation but I’m not that sure that in matter of love they also are that different. Perhaps the way we communicate has changed, before there was no WhatsApp, and all we had to say had to be face to face. That way, things were not so easy nor so difficult.

This week, we recommend a funny and non-formal book for all those who have decided to move in and live as a couple. Maybe after the summer? Or after holidays? Before, I suggest having a glance at this book published by Maeva, PEQUEÑAS IDEAS ANTES DE VIVIR EN PAREJA, so that you take note of these little details that will stop you from messing it up, if you’re warned. Loving as a couple is not easy and even less if that love is forever and 24 hours a day. Princes charming do not exist, and sharing a bed every night stops being something special, just as getting up every day to the sound of the alarm clock and with bleary faces. ‘Fighting’ for being the one that enters before in the bathroom or about who puts the dishes in the dishwasher: that really is what life together means, sharing everything, the good and the bad… That’s why this book is perfect for that particular friend who is convinced that the fact of moving in and live together will be the best thing that ever happened in her life, and I don’t say it’s not, but we must also be realistic and know that it is no bed of roses. It is better to take it with sense of humor and to read the ideas of the ‘experienced people’ and laugh with your partner and others persons about what COMMITMENT really means. And above all, take the compatibility test, which will give you many clues. Do you dare? This is a refreshing book for the summer and a special gift for anyone who wants to take that step, or has already taken it and wants to remember how it was like… Remembering is now fashionable and we all like it.

Summer has already started but, for most of us, we still have to wait a month and a little bit more in order to really enjoy holidays. We can’t wait for them to start and to bring us some free time and the chance to rest, above all so that we can forget schedules and a bit of our work. Dreaming doesn’t cost any money and perhaps novels are also a way to escape, that helps us to enjoy our resting days even more. Who wouldn’t like to be the main character of one of our readings? I’m sure that many of you would be able to choose a protagonist of one of your favourite novels, am I right?

This time, I would recommend OPERACIÓ JUDES, Jordi Solé’s novel, who has other two books published in the market. In that particular novel, the main character, Pol Vidal, turns out not to be the ideal inspector neither the one we would like to be, but living another of his adventures might be a perfect plan for those who like to solve mysteries. This is the ideal novel for these holidays, it is a detective story that takes us back to the year 1938, to the moment Pol Vidal receives an assignment from a faithful friend of Lluís Companys, president of the Catalan autonomous government (called la Generalitat de Catalunya) because a senior official has been murdered and they need the inspector’s help in order to investigate the case. They would never have imagined that this detective, who considers himself mediocre, would discover the most important secret of the Spanish civil war.

I don’t know if any of you is already a Pol Vidal’s follower but that novel has all the ingredients to captivate all lovers of good crime novels. And I’m sure that these mysteries won’t disappoint you. Of course, may be you would rather follow James Bond than Pol Vidal, if you’re given the choice, but OPERACIÓ JUDES would overcome many spies movies, trust me! So don’t even doubt it and pick that book for a good summer, and if it’s not enough for you, don’t forget there are two other adventures: BARCELONA FAR WEST and CIUTAT D’ESPIES.