Hello and happy Sunday!
I spent this week in sunny Barcelona with no other plan than to see Pearl Jam in concert twice.
It just so happened that our trip coincided with the Euro Football Cup where Spain met Germany, just as we were transiting a German airport. As we are flying back, through Germany again, the airports are filled with people who want to watch the final match in person, on Sunday night.
Once the two gigs were over, my husband and I proceeded to identify the nicest coffee shops and bookstores we could find. And they do abound in Barcelona!
We found an all English bookstore named “[backstory]” that served all you can drink coffee and had its own library system.
I found some of my dearest book titles in this section, and the books looked well-loved indeed: all the titles up for sharing bear a sticker that labels them as “pre-loved” books.
Barcelona is very rich in comic and manga stores as well. From a €10,000 life size Iron Man to €60 Game of Thrones dragon eggs they seem to have thought of everything they can monetise.
And some of the covers and titles we found are plain cute and made me chuckle.
Count on Japanese authors to do cats justice through their writing and their drawing!
Some of the titles I have never heard of, but have become interested in, such as the Blacksad series, which a dear friend of mine tells me is a well-known series among comic and graphic novels aficionados.
As I am writing this, I am on the plane back home, so I can’t put in the research I would like to do before writing.
The fact that we came across the soundtrack for Blacksad makes me think there is some sort of other visual series based on it. I’m looking forward to getting home and checking out more details about this. The idea of a black cat being the main character of a moody detective series is so cute and awesome that I can’t believe I’m only finding out about this now!
Of course I didn’t leave this store empty-handed.
I bought this beauty: a graphic novel in Spanish of the Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo, the book I used to say is my favourite book in the world when I was fifteen. And it really was.
I didn’t do as much reading as I would have liked, but I have finally managed to finish You Like It Darker after lingering on a short story for more than a week.
This is the one called Rattlesnakes, which I knew about as the sequel to Cujo and I actively avoided until it was the last story in the book I hadn’t read.
I’ve been saying that regardless of how much I’m enjoying Stephen King’s writing, I know there are books I will never read. It is one of them, Cujo is another. I know what they are about, I tried to read them, but didn’t get very far because they literally gave me violent and terrifying nightmares.
So I started Rattlesnakes with the fear that I won’t be able to sit through it. It turns out it wasn’t too bad, but I avoided reading right before bed.
Once I was done with the entire collection I felt the need to stay with Stephen King, so I picked up one of the Richard Bachman novels, Rage. They’re known as such because they were written under a pseudonym back when Stephen King wanted to return to writing for the pleasure of it, rather than from a need to meet the market’s and the fans’ expectations.
I chose this particular novel because of its subject matter which overlaps with one of Pearl Jam’s best-known songs and social commentaries: Jeremy.The topic is a school shooting.
Cheery, I know.
Not least, I found Paul Auster to be well-loved in Barcelona. In every bookstore we found, there was corner dedicated to his books.
In this particular one, they’ve aligned his novels with Siri Hustvedt’s ones, his wife.
Since I hadn’t actually bought Paul Auster’s last novel, I am bringing a copy home with me, as a souvenir or Barcelona’s beautiful stores.
Until next time.