a lady writing - Johannes Vermeer
Today, October 17, we are celebrating Writers' Day, although it could be celebrated daily because there is always reason to read one of them. There are so many to highlight, review or recommend that we would never finish. So I take a quick look at the ones that have been able to like, influence and inspire me the most. Maybe we share the likes.
From Safo or the Japanese Murasaki Shikibu to the recent winner of the Planet, Dolores Redondo, it has rained a lot. Now, the handful of extraordinary and successful poets, writers, screenwriters, journalists is already a heap without number. Although there is always the eternal question of if you read more to them than to them. Let each one give his answer. Let us begin.
I believe that all of our childhood, or at least all, we have read the fairy tales of Sophia Fyodorovna Rostopchina, the Countess of Ségur. And a little older, surely we do not miss any adventure of The Five. Girls in particular study not only in our schools, but also in Santa Clara and Torres de Malory, with the many classmates created by the prolific English writer. Enyd Blyton.
And we are not leaving Great Britain because in that high school adolescence more than one of us discovered the rich and elegant Mr. Darcy, the bland and tormented but paradigm of the most Victorian romantic that is Mr. Rochester. Or the brave and discreet Colonel Brandon pretending to the dreamy Marianne Dashwood. All coming out of the minds of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, as they point out to me, that between these sisters and Austen and as many wonderful characters as they devised, I can already mix Emily's Heatcliff with Emma in the same story.
We were able to equally enjoy nature and the most innocent and pure love between two unforgettable brothers, those who created Emilia Pardo Bazán in his so Galician The Pazos de Ulloa. I became fond of the genre that I like the most thanks to the queen of mystery, suspense and crime, Agatha Christie. No one can deny that in his house there is no shelf with the books of that collection.
Agatha Christie
I did not leave a book that I liked very much, although fantasy literature is not my devotion. The Forgotten King Gudú, Ana Maria Matute it has a privileged place in my memory.
Then you discover and read stories in a more "adult" way. Of those I highlight Beloved master, Rosa Montero, who I follow a lot in his role as a columnist. She and Soledad Puértolas they make up one of my favorite pairs of writers.
Rosa Montero and Soledad Puértolas
Regrettably my relationship is not that close with female writers anymore, let's say, media or bestsellers. I have to confess that I did not fall for the magic tricks of Harry Potter of JK Rowling, nor did it give me the vampire fever of decaf bloodsuckers from Stephanie meyer (not even in the darkest of Ann rice). Nor am I from the shadows of EL James. But I attribute it to my certain age and my little fondness for those genres. However, I take my hat off to his work and successes.
Just as I take it off before the plethora of crime novel authors who have made their way into this difficult genre. To name a few, the Nordic Camilla Läckberg, Mari Jungstedt or Åsa Larsson; the french Fred Vargas, whose curator Adamsberg is one of my favorites; the british Mo hayder (essential to discover his detective Jack Caffery) or the German Nele neuhaus They have made an important and deserved niche in a black panorama that their male colleagues dominate, or want to dominate. Here of course we have Dolores Redondo, which with its Batzán trilogy and its recent Planet deservedly stands out.
Camilla Låckberg, Mari Jungstedt, Åsa Larsson, Fred Vargas, Mo Hayder, Nele Nauhaus
I left for last a writer who inspired me a lot when writing one of my novels. I have a very particular affection for him because I remember seeing his books on the shelves in my house for as long as I can remember. I read some when I was little and have reread them not long ago. Is about Pearl S. Buck, the American writer, journalist, activist and screenwriter who spent forty years in China. He won a Pulizter in 1932 and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.
Anyway, I could go on and on but they (we) deserve more than one special, right?
Did Rochester get out of Jane Austen's mind? Really? And I who always believed that it had been created by Charlotte Brontë ...
Thanks for the note, Gaby. Rectified and clarified. That among so many good characters as they created one and the other, I already attribute them and mix them without shame.
There are also super sales that read well. I really like Matilde Asensi and Julia Navarro, especially the latter, who with "Tell me who I am" made me lose track of the days and hours to finish my "bum" as if it were a light pocket book.
Maruja Torres, both in the press and in her books, is another sure value. His irony and his age allow him to speak of many subjects that others would not dare to touch or under pain of death.
I can't with Lucía Etxebarria or Mercedes Abad. I'm already a grown-up so they can give me lessons.
Isabel, we agree on Navarro and his "Tell me who I am" and also on Torres, which I like a lot in the press. Also in Etxebarría or Abad. Oh, I would have liked to give more space to as many as there are.
Excellent list, just missing, in my modest opinion: Santa Teresa. In the same way, how you describe the characters of British writers. The case of the three Brontë sisters, at least as far as I know, is undoubtedly the most talented of writers within the same family, in the history of literature. Greetings.
Very good feminine review. Who has not read of dwarf Enyd Blyton. Who has not been thrilled with Victorian women. And I share with you, Mariola, the good black woman who is doing now from female hands. Very good entry !!!!