Books & Roses
Notes on my favorite day of the year and what's on my reading list.
There’s one day of the year when I truly wish I were back home, and that day is tomorrow.
April 23rd is the most magical day in Barcelona. If you’ve never experienced it, it’s La Diada de Sant Jordi (Saint George’s Day), a celebration of culture and love where people exchange books and roses. The heart of the city, La Rambla, turns into a vibrant corridor lined end to end with book and flower stalls. The tradition dates back to the Middle Ages and is closely tied to the legend of Sant Jordi. That legend might just be my favorite childhood story.
It tells of a dragon that terrorizes a village by demanding daily sacrifices. One day, the unlucky chosen one is the princess. Just as all hope seems lost, Sant Jordi—our brave knight—arrives on a pristine white horse, battles the dragon, and defeats it with his sword (or spear, depending on who’s telling the story, as you can see in the painting below). From the dragon’s blood, a rosebush blooms, and Sant Jordi picks the most beautiful red rose to give to the princess.
Whether you're celebrating Sant Jordi, World Book Day, or neither, if you love reading, maybe you’ll relate to this: there just aren’t enough days to read all the books I want to read. I keep a note on my phone filled with titles I’m eager to dive into, and every time I get my hands on a new one, four or five more are already calling my name.
So, to celebrate this special day—and to share a little of its magic—I’m dedicating this new installment of The Art of Discovery to my current reading list. Some are timeless classics, though most are recent finds, and a few haven’t been released yet (but are available for pre-order). I hope this collection inspires you, or at least gives you something new to look forward to.
Right now, I’m reading Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World by Aja Raden (included below), and Ensayo General by Milena Busquets.
I’d love to hear what books you’re enjoying right now. What’s on your list? And which are the ones you’ll always recommend, the ones that left a mark?
ART & CREATIVITY
The Inner Life of the Artist: Conversations from the Atelier, Juliette Aristides
“An inspirational guide to thinking, making, and embodying the mind of a creative person. The book contains a series of short, insightful essays and significant, meaningful quotes by contemporary and historical artists, each accompanied by a moving and inspiring selection of nearly 100 artworks from the past and present, to help enlarge our capacity for wonder.”
Surreal: The Extraordinary Life of Gala Dalí, Michele Gerber Klein
“Surreal, the long-awaited, definitive biography of Gala Dalí, unmasks this famous yet little-known queen of the twentieth-century art world, who graced the canvases, inspired the poetry, and influenced the careers of her illustrious lovers and husbands with tenderness, courage, and agency.”
Art, Yasmina Reza
“The Tony Award-winning play that focuses on the meaning of art (in the form of a solid white painting) as well as the meaning of friendship, to both the man who bought the painting and the two friends who come to see it."
MEMOIRS
Notes to John, Joan Didion
“In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.” She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, […] there were discussions about her own childhood, and the question of legacy.”
When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines, Graydon Carter
“Filled with colorful memories and intimate details, When the Going Was Good is Graydon Carter’s lively recounting of how he made his mark as one of the most talented editors in the business [through Vanity Fair]. With his inimitable voice and signature quip, he brings readers to lunches and dinners with the great and good of America, Britain, and Europe.” (I just bought it at Strand and can’t wait to start it!)
I Regret Almost Everything: A Memoir, Keith McNally
“A memoir by the legendary proprietor of Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and Morandi, taking us from his gritty London childhood in the fifties to his serendipitous arrival in New York, where he founded the era-defining establishments the Odeon, Cafe Luxembourg, and Nell's. McNally writes about the angst of being a child actor, his lack of insights from traveling overland to Kathmandu at nineteen, the instability of his two marriages and family relationships, his devastating stroke, and his Instagram notoriety.”
Fierce Attachments, Vivian Gornick
“In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother’s romantic depression over the early death of her husband. Next door lives Nettie, an attractive widow whose calculating sensuality appeals greatly to Vivian. These women with their opposing models of femininity continue, well into adulthood, to affect Gornick’s struggle to find herself in love and in work.”
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
“In 1936, originally intending merely to report on the Spanish Civil War as a journalist, George Orwell found himself embroiled as a participant—as a member of the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unity. […] Homage to Catalonia is both Orwell’s memoir of his experiences at the front and his tribute to those who died in what he called a fight for common decency.”
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Anaïs Nin
“Nine volume series in the influential artist and thinker's own words. The first volume (1931-1934) begins when Nin is about to publish her first book and ends when she leaves Paris for New York.”
REFLECTING ON OURSELVES & THE WORLD WE LIVE IN
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, Vauhini Vara
“A personal and provocative exploration of how technology companies have reshaped human language, and, if we let them, could steal it from us. Searches illuminates Big Tech's incursion into our lives, while proposing that by harnessing the collective imagination that taught us to communicate in the first place, we might invent a nobler, freer relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.”
Biography of Silence: An Essay on Meditation (Biografía del Silencio), Pablo D’Ors
“With silence increasingly becoming a stranger to us, one man set out to become its intimate: Pablo d'Ors, a Catholic priest whose life was changed by Zen meditation. With disarming honesty and directness, as well as a striking clarity of language, d'Ors shares his struggles as a beginning meditator: the tedium, restlessness, and distraction. But, persevering, the author discovers not only a deep peace and understanding of his true nature, but also that silence, rather than being a retreat from life, offers us an intense engagement with life just as it is.”
Perfection, Vincenzo Latronico
“Anna and Tom, an expat couple, have fashioned a dream life for themselves in Berlin. They are young digital "creatives", freelancers without too many constraints, who spend their free time cultivating house plants and their images online. […] Edging closer to forty, they try living as digital nomads only to discover that, wherever they go, "the brand of oat milk in their flat whites was the same."
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell
“In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives.”
The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch
“Lasch’s diagnosis of American culture is even more relevant today, predicting the limitless expansion of the anxious and grasping narcissistic self into every part of American life. The Culture of Narcissism offers an astute and urgent analysis of what we need to know in these troubled times.”
The Intelligence of Flowers, Maurice Maeterlinck
“Writing with characteristic eloquence, Maeterlinck asserts that flowers possess the power of thought without knowledge, a capacity that constitutes a form of intelligence. […] This is a book for those who are excited by creative encounters between literature and science as well as current debates on the relationship of humankind to the natural world.”
FASHION & STYLE
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