Fans of Maggie O’Farrell have received the good news that at the beginning of the year –specifically, the first day of February– we will have a new novel by the Irish author: The Marriage Portrait. It has been translated into Catalan by Marc Rubió and will be published by L’Altra Editorial. It is a story set at the end of the 19th century, in an Irish corner far from everything, and inspired by the adventure experienced by the author’s great-grandfather, who worked mapping the island for the British army. Editors and critics speak of an overwhelming and moving narrative, and many claim that it is her best work.

In times when I struggle to find good reads (good in the sense that they carry me away), there is a strategy that rarely fails. Try going to a trusted bookstore (in my case, Mitja Mosca, in Badalona) and, without rushing, stroll near the books while you chat with the bookseller, pick one up just because you are attracted to its cover, read the first page of another, let yourself be carried away by absurd intuitions rather than logical reasons (well-known author, respected publisher).

The sound of the ES-Alert has become a symbol of these times we live in, of instability and uncertainty, of anguish and dread, of this kind of life we will have to lead between being cowed and resigned. If the impertinence of the alert that interrupts reading, conversations, and states of reflection is combined with news of the riots in France or the grotesque presence of Trump or the unease that a technological advance like AI can cause us, day-to-day life sometimes becomes unbearable.

Love me tender (2025) is a film that can be seen on Filmin and which has adapted the autobiographical novel by French author Constance Debré. This book was a phenomenon in France in 2020 and the film director Anna Cazenave read it just when she had become a mother. As she herself explained, knowing the story of a woman who does not allow motherhood to erase her other identities comforted her greatly and led her to adapt the story for the cinema.

The English editor Diana Athill discovered, once retired, that writing was what really made her happy. She wrote novels and memoirs, and when she had already turned ninety she published Somewhere Towards the End, a book with a very explicit title in which she reflected on old age and the proximity of death, among many other things. Athill's calculations were wrong, and the author lived another decade that allowed her to publish four more volumes.

I have linked two readings that have rhymed within me like two verses of the same poem: Cosima, by Grazia Deledda, and The Fragile Lights of Earth, by Gabrielle Roy. These are memoirs by two writers who are apparently far apart in time and geography. I say apparently far apart because, as they are memories of their early years, and given that both wanted to be and were writers, their books have much in common and reading them one after the other has been a very interesting experience.

As is already known, there are two types of readers, those of us who are still anchored to paper and those who have let themselves be seduced by new technologies. At the end of the summer, I heard someone praising the convenience of the e-book for going to the beach because it doesn't weigh anything, it doesn't get wet, it doesn't get damaged. I was shocked, theatricalizing my reaction a little: there is nothing I like more than that great novel I have read by the sea that ends up crumpled, the pages wavy and, when you go to put it on the shelf, a few grains of sand still fall to the ground.

Many years ago, almost thirty, I read the novel Mal de amores, by the Mexican writer Ángeles Mastretta (Puebla de Zaragoza, 1949) and I fell in love with this author—a love for life—and that passionate love story set in Puebla during the Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, that of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. The inescapable love of young Emilia Sauri for a childhood friend, the rebellious and incorruptible Daniel Cuenca, has now arrived on the Netflix platform, in a series also titled Mal de amores. It was directed by Catalina Aguilar Mastretta, the author's daughter, and from my point of view this makes the adaptation—with the inevitable loss of depth that almost always exists between the book and the audiovisual—exude great affection and respect for the original work. If you want to watch the series I won't tell you not to; but if you want to accept a recommendation, read the novel by Mastretta, one of the great Mexican voices, who always places at the center of her stories female figures who fiercely defend their longing for independence.

In 2007, the Nobel Prize in Literature celebrated the long, prestigious and committed literary career of Doris Lessing, who received the news with the calm of her 88 years, just as she was arriving home loaded with groceries.

This summer we went to Brittany to rediscover a landscape that seduced us years ago and, above all, to be able to rest for a few days from the suffocating and overwhelming heat we had at home. We achieved this goal because the Atlantic air stopped the thermometers during the day and cooled the nights by the sea.

I have often spoken with editors and booksellers about an issue that is quite incomprehensible: collections of short stories or narratives – say some and others – are difficult to sell. In most cases, all of us participating in the conversation agree that the short story is an excellent genre, that we are a country with a very good tradition of short story writers, but, alas, the idea has taken hold that readers are not in favor of them, so short stories are published little. Few are also written, and we don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg. It is also significant that short story awards are significantly less substantial than novel awards.

We have all thought, at some point, "there are people who are unlucky." Sometimes it's true: there are very dramatic lives, people who have suffered major setbacks. But there are also those people who are simply convinced they are very unlucky. They tell you that everything has gone wrong for them, that they don't get along with their family, that their friends have disappointed them, that society doesn't value them.

This heat that suffocates and weakens us is, as it could not be otherwise, a great generator of conversation topics this summer. What about climate change, what about adapting to it, what about air conditioners doing us more harm than good. In many of these exchanges of ideas and experiences, I have detected a common element.

It often happens to me – and I take for granted it's a generational thing – that in my circle, the fact that my husband and I don't watch series or movies together is met with surprise. I say it must be generational because only people our age remember when families used to gather to watch TV, all at the same time and on the same channel.

Years ago, losing your health, being certain you are closer to the end has, in my opinion, no appeal. Perhaps the only one is learning, but I am one of those who think that life teaches you so many beautiful and fruitful things that this lesson, the fragility of your life and that of others, is not very rewarding.

In this article I would like to make two recommendations. The first is that you read The Abandoned Woman, by Balzac, which Viena Edicions has published in the collection Petits Plaers, translated by Josep Maria Pinto. The second recommendation is that, if you are one of those who have the habit —like me— of reading with a pencil in hand to underline especially beautiful or interesting phrases or paragraphs, this time you let it go. I let it go when I realized I was underlining practically everything.

Siri Hustvedt's faithful followers filled L’Auditori and, as if we were at mass – in concentrated silence – followed the conversation the writer had with Anna Guitart.

They say it's never too late to make great discoveries. I admit I haven't been very interested in graphic novels until now, but today I want to recommend one: Regreso al Edén, by the Valencian Paco Roca. A friend recommended it to me, knowing my fondness for old family photos.

The other day, one weekday afternoon, I passed through one of the most touristy areas of the center of Barcelona. I was heading to Casa Amatller to participate in a book club I had been invited to. The activity is organized by Cases Singulars, the entity that manages the schedule in various heritage sites in Barcelona, such as private houses, libraries, and palaces.

Manolo García made a proposal to the thousands of people filling the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium: we want to offer you joy and for you to give us joy. And the offer was enthusiastically accepted, of course. Because we all want joy, and that night of reunion we were sure of achieving it. We also wanted to return it to the musicians who, with their songs, were about to transport us to the best years of our lives. And so it was.