Bruno Blog

I do not play chess, but I have always thought it is a game for intelligent people and it awakes my curiosity. My father tried to teach me how to play it when I was a kid, but I did not get hooked and now I regret it because it is a strategy game and, I see that strategy is basic in life. Therefore, when the young author Adriana Hernández Planillas showed me a book where she applied the chess techniques to life, I thought we had got it right we can be strategist of our life.

The chess board is a lucid representation of the game of life. There are achievements that need little and humble steps like the pawn’s; others need reliable and convinced steps like those of the queen. There are losses and setbacks but there are also changes in the strategy that makes us regain the control of the game, the power of our destiny, exactly like life. 64 squares of the board that offer un a vital lesson.

There is no need to be an expert to understand this book, it is simply a way to awake the strategist that all of us carry inside and it is probably asleep or off. If you put strategy in life, we are sure that the path can be bearable, neither easier nor more difficult, just more bearable, which is a lot given the society we are living. If we drive the rudder of life with strategy, everything flows better. Do you want to learn it?

After the great success of the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” we think that a book like this is a tool for both, the fans of this game and the ones that are not fans, because it will open their mind to encourage them to play or at least, learn the moves that apply to our daily life and will help us understand when it is necessary to turn in this game of life that does not stop challenging every day. Having tools prepared for these challenges is a great weapon to achieve that our life is as we hope and desire it to be. So, without any more words, let’s go! Let the game continue!

There are people that are born to vindicate, that do not settle, that have a fighter spirit for what they consider fair. However, the words equality and justice are two terms that, although we know their meaning, everyone can interpret in a free and different way and from different perspectives.

When I read the new Ana Alonso’s novel, her first novel for adults, I fell in love right away with Adela, a strong woman that was born in the working Barcelona and that fought for equality and for a more just world. She’s a teacher, a compulsive lector, seamstress to make a living and a single and imperfect mother.

The author places us at the end of the 1940’ decade. Without giving up the political and social criticism, she brings color to some years that we imagine in black and white, like the images from NODO.

The story begins in 1948, during the first years of the port-war. For Adela fitting in provincial León society, in the closed and suffocating of a village in the mountains or in the grey Madrid of debris, is painful. She doesn’t adapt to a life of suspicion, to be looked at the corner of one’s eyes or to always keep her guard up in front of informers while her people is consumed in the guerrilla or put on the Regime mask and ask for «special tea» in the more frequented coffee shops.

After all, she arrives to León because her life her life in the Pyrenees was truncated a day of the fateful year the war was lost. Adela never got to comprehend what happened that day. Until she starts to find answers in the least expected place: the pages of the romantic novel A stain of carmine. The hidden clues in the story seem to contain an invitation to get back the colors of that dreamed revolution. But which margin will the teacher victim of reprisal have left to fight por a better society?

Through Adela, Carmen, Mercedes, Federica Montseny or Gloria Fuertes, Ana Alonso brings us the corseted world of the women of the post-war era and to the white and black Spain from the 1940’s, full of secrets, masks, shown lies and hidden truths.

A story where the historic mark is part of the novel and feminism is what moves Adela to keep going with the help of reading, which is one of the key points of this to be directed towards being one of the novels that will captivate the female public in general because it mixes three of the ingredients that always work: strong woman, love and books. What are waiting for to read it?

A large group of young people thinks history is just a school subject and it is boring, but for a smaller group, it wakes their curiosity up because it analyses the whys of the past. Seeing history repeat itself awakens their interest. Reaffirming that the human being does not learn from their own mistakes and realizing that the past should be a roadmap instead of a bunch of events happening without consequences, makes some part of us reflect on this to be able to avoid making these same mistakes again and strengthen what already works.

José Antonio Lucero, teacher and youtuber, believes that history is fun and with his book “Why the first emojis were written in clay and other whys of history” he tells the anecdotic part of it and tries to answer other whys of history like: Why do we use emojis? Why do we prefer sweets over Swiss chard? Why do we keep our pay in a money box? But he also takes us to a walk-through history from the child and young people of each era’s point of view. I am sure I would have bought this book when I was a student. And you?

In the editorial sector, some years back, was a book series that sold a lot of copies. Its name was “Horrible Stories” and each volume told one era of history in a fun way. It was an international success, and we want to repeat it with this book that, with a renewed and modern way of a teacher and youtuber that reveals the great and small whys of history.

If nowadays there is still the need to claim the role of women in many areas in society, imagine what had to be done during the Medieval Era so women could have a valued role in society. Most of the women accepted their secondary role at men’s service, but there has always been restless, brave, determined and rebel women. One of the few trades women regularly carried out outside the home was assistance to birth. The midwife work was known, during the Medieval Era, like an exclusive or sometimes complementary task in the life of these women. The babysitters and nursemaids from the well-of classes could also be professionals. During the 12^th century different advice to carry out these tasks were gathered in texts named Trotula, where a lot of information about women’s medicine was compiled. The texts of la Trotula are considered the “the most popular montage of materials about feminine medicine since the late 12^th until the 15^th century”.

The lead character of Frost hair, the new novel of Teresa Sagrera, published by Columna, was a healer, midwife that lived in Vila Major in the 14^th century. A woman chased for being a witch and poisonous sought shelter in the Castle of Montsoriu, property of one of the most powerful line of the principality. There she meets Bernat II, viscount of Cabrera who became the first consultant of Pere III, the king of the Aragón crown. Often life proves that a very thin thread separates glory from defeat, and envy and the fight for the power can change people’s lives in the blink of an eye.

A classic cut historical novel, where the feminine character has a lot to tell, where there is a love story and all the necessary ingredients to captivate the readers that like this era so much. Thanks to Teresa Sagrera we can discover the castles of that zone (situated in the Montseny), the rural life and the society, always divided between nobles and commoners.

If you look up in the dictionary the word FREEDOM, you will find the following: faculty or right people have to choose in a responsible way their own path of acting inside a society.

Reading Alejandro Palomas’ new novel, you can feel the freedom of his characters in such a forceful way that you end up almost with the need to fly, to feel the wind in your cheeks and to do what your body tells you to do. We know all his worlds stir the most important thing in human beings, our feelings, and in this novel, not only does it stir them, but it also brings you wings to follow our dreams and be free.

I cannot deny that Alejandro Palomas, in the new world he created, in which he tells the story of a friendship between a mature man and woman has amazed me greatly. Jon, an elephant caretaker and Edith, widow of Andrea and mistress of eleven cats, live in an abandoned village. Lonely neighbors at first and then good friends, neither one of them can imagine that the night in which the vane of the bell tower turns on itself, the eye of time is placed above the village and the life of both is about to turn with it.

The love between an orphan man and a silent elephant named Susi, a Japanese girl with a bird name who speaks with flamingos, a mother and a daughter who search for each other since the time distracted them, a grandfather whose family spell will be law, one hour at night- the tremulous hour- in which everything happens, and everything stays. A land with your name is the bravest dream of two souls that strive to make the world into a better place. A story about LOVE in capital letters, about honesty with one’s dreams and about freedom taken to its purest expression.

Every time that Alejandro hands over to me his new manuscript I feel dizzy because I know it will stir something inside me. This novel had me falling in love because of so many small things, which are actually huge, that I do not know how to explain the way I felt when I finished it. Like each of Alejandro Paloma’s books, it has left a deep feeling inside me which is difficult to explain and I need time to digest it. A great novel written by this author who is pure emotion and when you get into his world, it is impossible to get out, not because you cannot, but because you do not want to.