Our guest today: Llucia Ramis
Why we love her: Barcelona is fabulous, and so is Llucia!
Her latest: Things That Happen To You in Barcelona When You're Thirty
The scoop: On the morning after celebrating her thirtieth birthday in Barcelona, a journalist wakes up to a hangover—and a magician in her bed—and wonders if she’s too old to be living as though she was still twenty years old. Her artist friend, Blai, has already immortalized the rest of their group on canvas. There’s man-eater Cati, drama-queen lesbian Neus, and wild-haired, poet turned teacher Nil. But as she enters a new decade of her life, the narrator remains “an idea for a painting that is yet to be defined.”
Our thoughts: Super fun!
Giveaway: Five eCopies! Leave a comment and you'll be entered to win! We'll choose the winners after Sunday, November 4th at 3pm PST.
Fun fact: Llucia knows Barcelona--she moved there when she was eighteen!
Where you can read more about Llucia: Her author page, or Twitter.
CHICK LIT IS NOT DEAD PRESENTS...LLUCIA RAMIS'S 5 BEST EVERS
BEST SONG: “Young Adult Friction” by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, because it puts me in a great mood and makes me feel like dancing and singing: “Don't check me out!” I also like “Almost Crimes” by Broken Social Scene, “I Wanna Fall in Love” by BMX Bandits, because it brings back memories of great happiness, “Beneath the Rose” by Micah P. Hinson, because it reminds me of other, more difficult moments, and “Estupendamente” by The New Raemon, because it’s the perfect soundtrack for Saturday morning hangovers in Barcelona after having failed, on yet another night, in the search for love. But most of all, I love Morrissey.
BEST BOOK: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, by Peter Cameron, is a tender, fun, and intelligent portrait of New York after 9/11. I also like Anne Sexton’s poetry, because it’s very visual and intense, and The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcolm. And Saul Bellow, J. M. Coetzee, Ann Beattie, Alice Munro, Antonio Di Benedetto, Daniel Clowes . . . I’m sorry, I can’t choose just one!
BEST MOVIE: The Usual Suspects, Being John Malkovich, and The Third Man, because they blur the line between reality and fiction, and you can see how they construct the story. And I also like Clerks and Diamond Flash, a very strange, disturbing, and shocking film by the Spanish cartoonist Carlos Vermut. I think he chose the actors through a casting by Skype. All of them are amateurs.
I also like Historias extraordinarias, by the Argentinian Mariano Llinás, a very long and original film that gives me the strange impression that, because of the way in which it’s told, it could have been me who wrote it. Or rather, I would have liked to have written it. In any case, my favorite film of all time is The Goonies. I want to be a goonie.
BEST LIFE MOMENT: Sitting on the balcony of my grandmother’s house, in Portocolom, just in front of the sea, where the boats are moored. And eating pan con tomate (bread slathered with tomato) for dinner there while the sun sets and my grandfather talks and talks, telling old family stories. Portocolom is a very sheltered and peaceful port in Majorca, in the Mediterranean. I have summered there since I was little, and those afternoons never change. All the summers of childhood are always the same.
BEST PIECE OF ADVICE: All problems have a solution. And if they don’t, don’t worry because therefore they’re not problems.
Thanks, Llucia! xoxo, L&L