The ongoing process of attempting to understand (but never really understanding completely) is absolutely productive. The relentless attempt to understand is what moves a practice moving forward.

— David Reinfurt

Oh boy, 99 books this year. I started listening to audio books too, commuting or during car rides alone. I also read more fiction and poetry, one of my goals.

Below are my favourites and the full list of books of this year. You can also check my lists for 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Favourites ⭐️

Canto yo y la montaña baila by Irene Solà

La eternidad, cosa ligera. Cosa diaria, cosa pequeña.

A Criação do Mundo by Miguel Torga

Não os prendam. Só quando de todo não puder deixar de ser… Façam-lhes a vida difícil… Façam-lhes a vida difícil… E faziam. Quem não acertava o passo pelo chouto do rebanho, ou apodrecia num calabouço ou morria de fome. A nação inteira era agora uma tumba de silêncio e abulia.

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli

sometimes it’s inevitable for the past to be forgotten, especially if the present is no less horrific

Solaris by Stanisław Lem

How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?

Internacional de Poesía Anarquista by Samuel L. París

Proverbio antiutilitarista

As mandarinas cómense por algo mais que polas vitaminas.

Refugee Conversations - Bertolt Brecht

This beer isn’t proper beer, although that is perhaps compensated for by the fact that these cigars are not real cigars either – but your passport, that has to be a passport. Otherwise they won’t let you in.

The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie

When I came downstairs and saw the pieces of clothing and lingerie, the shoes, scattered over the tiles of the corridor in the sunlight, I had a sensation of sorrow and beauty.

Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod

I’ve come to realize the only true walk is the re-walk. You cannot know a place without returning. And even then, once isn’t enough. That’s why I’m back. Back on the Peninsula. Walking these roads I’ve walked before.

Full list

Fiction

• Pastoralia - George Saunders
• The Anthropologists - Aysegül Savas
• Como rebolar alegremente sobre um vazio exterior - André Guedes & Miguel Loureiro
• Carcoma - Layla Martínez
• The Wind’s Twelve Quarters - Ursula K. Le Guin
• La Gran Novel·La sobre Barcelona - Sergi Pàmies
• Canto yo y la montaña baila - Irene Solà
• E se eu gostasse muito de morrer - Rui Cardoso Martins
• The Literary Conference - César Aira
• A Criação do Mundo - Miguel Torga
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• A Hora da Estrela - Clarice Lispector
• Nocturno de Chile - Roberto Bolaño
• For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
• Deus Tem Caspa - Júlio Henriques
• Happening - Annie Ernaux
• Uma Abelha Na Chuva - Carlos de Oliveira
• R.U.R. - Karel Čapek
• Wool - Hugh Howey
• Address Unknown - Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
• Os Pobres - Raul Brandão
• Minor Detail - Adania Shibli
• Conversations - César Aira
• Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel García Márquez
• Short Fiction - Ray Bradbury
• We Do Not Part - Han Kang
• War with the Newts - Karel Čapek
• Burmese Days - George Orwell
• Els desperfectes - Irene Pujadas
• The Grass Is Singing - Doris Lessing
• Childhood, Youth, Dependency - Tove Ditlevsen
• Objecto Quase - José Saramago
• Solaris - Stanisław Lem
• Quando os Lobos Uivam - Aquilino Ribeiro
• Habitada - Cristina Sánchez-Andrade
• Satantango - László Krasznahorkai
• O Banqueiro Anarquista - Fernando Pessoa
• Golden Notebook - Doris Leasing
• ¿Que me queres, amor? - Manuel Rivas
• Todos os Nomes - José Saramago

Poetry

• Soco e Sono - Inês Morão Dias
• Lisbossa - Rafael Vieira
• Parole alla finestra - Francesco Navarrini
• Luci prese al volo - Francesco Navarrini
• Cem Mil Anos para ir à Escola - Paul Goodman
• Gasoline - Gregory Corso
• Tao Te Ching - Ursula K. Le Guin
• Antologia Poética - Miguel Torga
• Bèstia - Irene Solà
• Late in the Day - Ursula K. Le Guin
• Internacional de Poesía Anarquista - Samuel L. París
• Notas sobre a Circulação de um Corpo - José Amaro
• Jeremias o louco - José Agostinho Baptista

Non-fiction

• Software for Artists Book #003 - Zainab Aliyu
• On Browsing - Jason Guriel
• Count Down - Shanna Swan
• A Poetry Handbook - Mary Oliver
• The Undercurrents - Kirsty Bell
• The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion - Edmond Jabès
• A Map of Future Ruins - Lauren Markham
• Kin City - Magdalena Taube & Krystian Woznicki
• For Health Autonomy - CareNotes Collective
• Refugee Conversations - Bertolt Brecht
• The Use of Photography - Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie
• Salatinas - Rafael Vieira
• Doppelganger - Naomi Klein
• Mutual Aid - Dean Spade
• L’últim recer - Nacho Collado Gozálvez
• La Llamada - Leila Guerriero
• Bestiário Menor - Eduarda Neves
• Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
• A Simpler Life - Ryan Bartaby
• Canto do Aumento - Andreia C. Faria
• O que temos a ver com isto? - Maria Vlachou
• A Year in the Art World - Matthew Israel
• Escritos de Arte - Jeff Wall
• How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century - Erik Olin Wright
• On Contemporary Art - César Aira
• Anarcosindicalismo - Gaspar Manzanera
• At the Café - Errico Malatesta
• Teoría de la gravedad - Leila Guerriero
• Electronic Civil Disobedience & Other Unpopular Ideas - Critical Art Ensemble
• Things Become Other Things - Craig Mod
• Fuck Green New Deal - Milvus
• Out of the Ruins - Robert H. Haworth and John M. Elmore
• Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures - Mark Fisher
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This - Omar El Akkad
• Autonomía y subsistencia - Aurélien Berlan
• Prise de possession - Louise Michel
• Growing Up Absurd - Paul Goodman
• Nueva ilustración radical - Marina Garcés
• +KAOS - Austistici/Inventati
• The Wave in the Mind - Ursula K. Le Guin
• A ditadura portuguesa contra Castelao - Antonio Iglesias Mira
• Prospecto - André Guedes
• On the Duty of Civil Disobedience - Henry David Thoreau
• On the Abolition of All Political Parties - Simone Weil
• A revolução social e a sua interpretação anarquista - José Correia Pires
• A Participação Cívica em Portugal - José Carlos Mota

But in some ways parties were serious and important too, she thought. They were a way of suspending life, all the serious business of life, in order to do something unimportant: and wasn’t that an important thing to do?

— Ghosts by César Aira

It’s equally stupid to say that capitalism is fine but fascism is a step too far. If capitalism had been capable of existing without fascism, fascism wouldn’t have existed. Fascism is supposed to be just an excrescence, or so I’ve read. But a person suffering from a certain type of excrescence known as cancer is prone to die even if he is otherwise perfectly healthy. The idea of a peaceful capitalism is lunacy. People think this is how it works: everything is ticking along quite nicely, peace reigns, but then there’s a disruption, an unfortunate incident: war. It’s like with fattening pigs! Every day someone brings you a nice meal; you get washed, flattered and photographed; but from time to time an unfortunate incident occurs and you get slaughtered.

— Refugee Conversations by Bertolt Brecht

First heard at Meio Dia Meio Noite #22 on Radio Alhara.