2021 has not been a great reading year. 50 books in total. In return, I have written a lot. Usually the two things are opposed in my case. I have to choose.
Sad, but the books I remember the most about are the ones I liked the least and it was the hardest for me to read. I perfectly remember their atmosphere of oppression, their sticky and slow characters, their weird and tricky plots… Some I didn’t even finish.
On the other hand, of those that I have read in a sigh, I barely remember brushstrokes. I love those books, I know those characters, but the truth is that I don’t remember many details. Just the total feeling of happiness or love for the book. I have noticed when rereading them to make this list.
–
My favorites from this rare year:
Middlesex de Jeffrey Eugenides: librazo. Someone who is born with a changed gender. A tangled family of Greeks. Immigration. Love, family problems … Seriously, it’s amazing. Here I spoke of her first paragraph: “I was born twice: I was a girl first, on an incredible smog-free day in Detroit in January 1960; and boy later, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August 1974. “
Fair of Ana Iris Simón: hit of the year. I still like. Speak in this newsletter. He has a lot of criticism for being a traditionalist. Look, I don’t know, I don’t need to agree with everything I read. Sometimes with them telling me things from a point of view that I had not taken into account works for me. And this book is special and generational. And I agree with all the hype about big cities and creative jobs being sold to us, and since they are cool, anything should be acceptable. And, look, no.
You have to watch Anna Starobinets: very hard. Non-fiction. A woman has to abort in Russia while she is 20 weeks pregnant. Sincere, realistic, emotional and helpful. It is a complaint and sheds light on one of those vital moments that everyone throws sand on. I wrote a whole newsletter about the book. He blew me away.
And the teaspoons were from Woolworths by Barbara Comings: a discovery I read on the beach next to the extraordinary guy at the beach bar (there was no Omnicron and there was a breeze and the Dire Straits were playing and I had a private pool with a huge seal made of mosaics and the fridge full of ice cream and wine ). That I am missing, the book. It’s a drama told with a lot of humor, which I think is my favorite genre, actually, despite my fame. A naive woman marries the wrong man. Get married quickly … repent slowly. Poverty, love, selfishness, feminism, and a sense of humor.
No mama, no de Verity Bargate: mothers, dramas, come on, my thing. A weird book on postpartum depression and love with a screwed up ending. I do not say much more because it is complicated. (I proposed it in the ELLE Book Club).
Little brother of Ibrahima Balde: I already talked about this in the last newsletter. It is a book to love: small, lyrical, beautiful, sincere … It opens your guts and puts your feet on the ground. And if you have a heart, it may help us to see migrants differently.
A little luck from Claudia Piñeiro: I loved it. It is a book about forgiveness of others and self-forgiveness. A woman must return to her city after years of escaping. Precious. And it keeps you very attached to reading.
Some of the details are lost to me. I had to look at my notes. It may be because I read them too fast. It turns out that there is a phenomenon called ‘Principle of closure’ that makes us want to watch a series all at once to see how it ends or, in this case, read the end of the book. That speed causes us to lose focus on the details, we are focused on the end, we go through a mental tunnel and we are left with few memories.
As humans, we want to complete the incomplete. We find it difficult to leave plots open. We need to know what would happen, how it ends, take things to the end. And, in any case, build an ending when it is open.
Like every new year, we believe that there is a change between December 31 and day 1. Now yes. Not now. We want to have an end, a full stop. And even more so now that, in reality, we have never finished leaving 2020. Sometimes it is difficult for me to realize that there are almost two years within the pandemic. This really is a tunnel.
I have realized that this year we all walk with small wishes and manageable purposes. Health and some love. Just enough to keep pulling. Here we are. A virgin that I stay as I am but massive. We are millions touching wood. I get it. I myself had decided to move on from the big goals. Actually, of the objectives. To be in January dreaming of a trip in May, or of what I will do when this or that happens, when I lose four kilos, when I do sports three days a week, when I cook, read more, I am less angry. Going from feeling good only when I start another project, another idea, to having something going. I was going to go short.
But not. I want it all. I started the year smelling Philosykos from Diptyque, one of my favorite perfumes that smells like a siesta, shade and sun, French fries, fig trees and fields, bikes, air, the beach, floating in the pool, olives , to good books, to sunscreen, wet skin and slow songs, to tomatoes, to lost time, to a storm, to dinner parties and to friends.
I was going to toast. To touch wood. But I smelled my wrist and, look, no. I’m tired of only being able to wish for health when I see a redhead number. Good health, of course, but also the other. Let’s see if from touching wood we will forget to dream. Like those who ask for a job in 2022. Ask for 5 million euros! I want it all.
Happy New Year. Happy dreams and happy reading.
–
