AGES: all

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Land of men

Antoine de St. Exupéry

I recommend it because it is a book written from the perspective of a pilot who has often flown solo and has reflected on human landscapes from the sky and with his feet on the ground, rubbing shoulders with a variety of characters. But above all because sample, with simplicity and a direct look, shows us that we and those around us are beings worthy of being loved.

AGES: young people and adults

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Wakefield

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Illustrated edition by Ana Juan

Extraordinary story, text and illustrations. The bilingual edition is very useful.

"I remember having read in some old newspaper or in some old magazine a chronicle which, told as if it were real, told the story of a man, by the name of Wakefield, who decided to go and live away from his wife for a long time...". Thus begins this story, which Borges called the greatest and most perfect narrative device in history, a direct ancestor of the stories of Melville and Franz Kafha. Wakefield is a quiet, vain, egotistical man, prone to create puerile mysteries. One day he tells his wife that he is going on a business trip and that he will be back in two days...

Ana Juan, award Nacional de Ilustración 2010, has created an impressive graphic work that makes this cult story even more attractive.

AGES: young people and adults

AUTHOR'S CONFERENCE

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The utility of the useless: Manifesto

Nuccio Ordine. 2013

A very short and easy-to-read reflection on our world today and on the supposed uselessness of humanistic knowledge.

"The usefulness of the useless is not the relief of those who see how society is moving away from its own convictions, but goes much further, it is an intellectual exercise in defence of the world as it should be, as it should never cease to have been, and is therefore a necessary step towards its return to being what it should be. Nuccio Ordine is to be thanked for having, with his short book, underpinned one of the pillars on which our society should be based, that of humanistic knowledge, without aiming to tear down or question any of the others. Because the usefulness of the useless does not exclude that of the useful, that is just one of the false dichotomies that the perversion of language has made us perceive as true when it is nothing more than demagogy". (librosyliteratura.es, Andrés Barrero)

AGES: young people and adults

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Philip Trentn's latest case

E. C. Bentley

Detective novel, pioneer of the genre (1913). A good work, elegant and ironic. Also dedicated to G.K. Chesterton, a great friend of the author. Agatha Christie herself has described this crime novel as "One of the three best detective novels ever written".

"Bentley's masterpiece, the result of his weariness with the infallibility of Sherlock Holmes, marked the beginning of modernity in the genre with a memorable protagonist whose charm lies precisely in his ability to laugh at his own mistakes, while he jovially moves through one of the most ingenious plots the reader can remember.

AGES: adults

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In Düsseldorf there are no lions and there can be no lions.

Ignacio Abad

Mr Griffin, Leon, 2020

The publishing house Mr Griffin has just published the novel by Nacho Abad En Düsseldorf no hay ni puede haber leones, a story about men's misplacement in the forest of post-truth". (Diario de León). Behind this metaliterary degree scroll (the phrase is by Sánchez Ferlosio, it seems) there is a novel with several plots that intersect in time and space, but with a very interesting background about lies (and, therefore, about truth and ethics), and especially about lies and truth in information, with interesting reflections on the power of the media and also on the persuasive capacity of style, so there is quite a lot of metaliterary. It is also an interesting book because of the employment of autofiction, with an interesting touch of irony and humour, and wonderfully written.

AGES: adults

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ARTICLE about the book in Philosophy&Co., "Discovering Japanese culture". culture".

The praise of the shadow

Junichiro Tanizaki

I found it a delightful and absolutely topical essay . Although it deals directly with the aesthetics of Japanese tradition confronted with the modernity with which it competed in the 1930s, the personal reflections - because it is a essay that reflects personal impressions and seems simply constructed on the fly, without pretensions - are easily adaptable to the present moment and to any culture, and lead us to look at the simple beauty of the small everyday things, especially those that have the aftertaste of the lived experience, and thus also to what we can consider, of all that surrounds us, essential.

"In the West, the most powerful ally of beauty has always been light. In traditional Japanese aesthetics, on the other hand, the essential thing is to capture the enigma of shadow. Beauty is not a substance in itself but a play of chiaroscuro produced by the juxtaposition of the different substances that form the subtle play of shadow modulations".

AGES: Youth and adults

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Same place, same things

Tim Gautreaux

Madrid: La Huerta Grande, 2018.

These are entertaining and sometimes funny stories about simple people in the southern United States. Bright and hopeful. Wonderfully well written. Excellent translation.

"Like a chronicle, The Same Place, Same Things recounts the ordinary lives of ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances and decisions. A farmer who faces the challenge of raising his granddaughter, a young man who falls platonically in love with a voice on the radio or an engine driver who causes a train accident of colossal proportions".

AGES: From 16 years of age

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Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes

An opportunity to discover the pleasure of rereading, and rereading for the sake of rereading. A book for all ages, with a lot of wisdom and good humour, and valuable lessons such as this one: "The charmers may well take away my fortune; but the effort and the courage, it will be impossible". So much more could be said about this work that we prefer to let it speak for itself.

AGES: Adults

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The Power and the Glory

Graham Greene

"Obsessed by the problem of evil as topic around which all his narrative work revolves, the author carries out in this book a relentless exploration of the mysteries of Good and Evil. discussion This is the story of Father José, a priest tormented by his conscience who is torn between service to his community and remorse for his feelings of sinfulness, for he is the father of a young girl. But the action also takes place during the time when Catholicism was persecuted in Mexico, in the 1920s, and his is the story of a flight from the authorities".

AGES: from 16 years old.

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On old age; on friendship

framework Tullius Cicero

The treatise On Old Age (Latin De senectute) is a short philosophical dialogue written by Cicero in 44 BC when he was 62 years old. Although the author died a violent death the following year, he did not count on it when he wrote this work. It is not, therefore, an existential testament, but an attempt at philosophical reflection on a classic human topic : the value of life experience, of life achieved, of the respect we owe to our elders.

AGES: Youth and adults

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King Lear

William Shakespeare

King Lear is perhaps the cruellest drama in Shakespeare's output, with a dark and fateful ending that leaves no one indifferent, but which masterfully and profoundly explores universal themes: old age and self-knowledge; justice and retribution; authority versus chaos; redemption and reconciliation; as well as the paradoxical contrast between sanity and madness. In a remote time, the aged Lear, King of Britain, decides to divide the kingdom among his three daughters, allocating the shares of agreement according to their love for him. The plot is particularly elaborate and combines two plots around two fathers (Lear and Gloucester) who are unable to perceive the sincerity and deceitfulness of their children's love (Goneril, Regan and Cordelia on the one hand, Edmund and Edgar on the other). In addition to the recommended edition, the 2018 film version, directed by R. Eyre and starring Anthony Hopkins, offers the viewer a visually powerful version of the drama, even at the cost of shortening some of the monologues.

AGES: from 16 years old.

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They came like swallows

William Maxwell

The novel offers a glimpse into the grief that eight-year-old Bunny suffers, along with her brother and father, due to the illness of their mother, who fell ill with Spanish flu in 1918. Maxwell guides the reader to appreciate the value of details, the heroism of the everyday, the role of the mother, the true pillar of the family. On the loss of loved ones, sad but hopeful.