You might recall that I filled my first #ShelfofMexico shortly after the current American administration renamed The Gulf of Mexico. There were some fabulous suggestions and all year, so far, I’ve been reading. (Shelf One is the first photo; I’ve already read all but one.)

I knew that I would “discover” a lot of Spanish-language writers whose work would be exciting or interesting; but I anticipated difficulty finding them. It turns out they are everywhere: it’s only that I wasn’t looking. My lists are, well, almost endless.

Jazmina Barrera’s Cross Stitch (2021; Trans. Christina MacSweeney) was a true pleasure in my stack. Which is strange, because when I paused to think about how to summarise it, I realised it’s mostly about grieving. (Thanks, Rebecca!) But it’s also about the particular kind of friendship that arises when one bonds over literature, and it’s about how we reach out and retract, and reach out again, in life—the gradual emergence of what truly matters to us over the course of a lifetime. It was so easy to relate to her quiet bookishness, to her desire to order the world with words (and stitches): I was sorry when it ended, but also it was a good ending. Which took out the sting. “When we left, I had five books in my bag (including Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood; I already had a copy, but the edition was beautiful) and Dalia had just one: Shirley Jackson’s complete short stories—I’d managed to convince her that they were wonderful, which felt like an absolute triumph.” It felt like an extra bit of luck to be reading Shirley Jackson at the very same time!

Granta Number 113 is the first I bought (rather than borrowed from the library), back in 2010. Issue numbers 7, 43 and 81 were devoted to young British writers (Buchi Emecheta, Ben Okri, and Zadie Smith among them). Numbers 54 and 97 to young American writers (Sherman Alexie and Z.Z. Packer among them). You can see the track record for yourself. Number 113 showcases work by Spanish, Chilean, Peruvian, Colombian, Argentinian, Mexican, Uruguayan, and Bolivian writers. when I hadn’t heard of any of them (all born in/after 1975). The stories are note-worthy, but the biographies and photographs, as well as the advertisements (all perfectly selected to mirror the issue’s theme)—all added substantially to my TBR. Pola Oloixarac (beginning with her debut from 2008, Las teorias salvajes) and Elvira Navarro (her 2007 debut, La cuidad en invierno), and Sonia Hernandez (her 2006 poetry debut, La casa del mar and 2008 stories Los enfermos erroneous): these three alone would comprise quite a list, even before you undertake Spanish lessons.

It is absolutely ridiculous, how many sticky notes I’ve plastered in Valeria Luiselli’s Sidewalks (2015; Trans. Christina MacSweeney), even though it’s barely a hundred pages long. So many that I debated whether or not to type out those passages but, then, when I reread them, I knew they were keepers. I should have guessed, because I remember how enthusiastic Jacqui was, when she wrote about these essays. My favourite was “Return Ticket” which explores the similarities and differences between knowing a city and knowing a story. I loved the way she expresses her thoughts about rereading: “Rereading begins in the comments written in the margins, the underlined phrases and scribbled footnotes; but especially in the objects left behind between the pages.: And how it intersects with how we understand ourselves, over time: “Impossible to return to a place and find it as you left it—impossible to discover in a book exactly what you first read between its lines. The work as a whole is satisfying, but this is the piece I’ll…reread.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (2022) offers another glimpse of the classic H.G. Wells’ 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau. The doctor is a key figure but not a main character, although his behaviour in conducting “scientific experiments” is at the heart of both the original and this retelling. In both instances, he is now living and working far from London, his work having received the wrong kind of publicity. Questions of morality regarding his “explorations” intersect with other themes (colonisation, identity, power) in such a way that you can focus on serious ideas simmering beneath or you can focus on what’s going to happen next. It’s the kind of page-turner that Moreno-Garcia’s fans have come to expect, but with subtle shifts in language and structure that suit a more old-fashioned story (with enduringly relevant themes). She writes in English; I’ve also enjoyed her debut and one other this year.

Isabel Allende’s Paula (Chile) is her memoir from 1994 during the time that her daughter Paula was in a coma, between December 1991 until the following year’s autumn. Even though I’ve enjoyed several of Allende’s essays about writing, as well as several novels and stories, I resisted this book wholeheartedly. But, it was strongly recommended, and I only regret not reading it sooner (more another time).

Cristina Peri Rossi is an Uruguayan writer and translator who has lived in Spain since she was exiled in 1972. Her collection of short stories Afternoon of the Dinosaur is translated by Robert S. Rudder and Gloria Arjona and I’ve included it in the Short Story Quarterly this fall. Mel recommended another Uruguayan writer, Felisberto Hernandez, and his 1993 collection Piano Stories, also translated in 2014, by Luis Harss—it’ll be included in the same quarterly (next week).

And I have two others to add. Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows (2007; Trans. Frances Riddle, 2021) is a compact, dense narrative that moves along its own timeline, measured either in terms of a psychological exploration as Elena confronts an abhorrent idea—her daughter having hanged herself (or having been hanged)—or in terms of hours in a single day during which Elena copes with the effects of Parkinson’s Disease on her body as she travels to meet someone whom she believes can assist with her one-woman-strong crusade. Time is key in the novel’s structure, arranged according to medication dosages around which Elena’s world now spirals. “Elena lets herself be driven along. She decides to take her medication early. She knows it’s okay, that even if Herself, that fucking whore illness, might not like it, Elena can manipulate her time with pills, although only barely.” If readers let themselves be driven along, they might not like it either, but Piñeiro’s story is not only quietly propulsive but Elena’s desperation is contagious. It’s no wonder that most people don’t read a book by Piñeiro–they simply read her, every single book of hers that they can find.

Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born (2020; Trans. Rosalind Harvey, 2023) was nominated for the International Booker Prize, but it landed in my stack because I really loved her earlier novel After the Winter (2014; Trans. Rosalind Harvey, 2018). The way she reveals information, the subtle shifts between authorial knowing and what’s shared with the reader. What she leaves unknown, unknowable—for both characters and readers (because it feels as though, often, readers are intended to have questions not knowledge in the end). A light—but remarkably effective—touch with setting, so that readers can imagine what it’s like to be in a certain apartment, without a list of contents or, really, more than a cursory glance. Because home feels like it’s so much more than the walls around a character (or, a family). This novel considers how women think about motherhood, about the limitations and opportunities it presents, and about how preparation for that responsibility is never adequate. How we humans are so often caught unprepared for what lies ahead, and how we stay in motion—and don’t—when overwhelmed.

This project has been equal parts compelling and unstructured. Early on, I read Carlos Fuentes’ Great Latin American Novel (translated by Brendan Riley in 2011 and published by Dalkey), which amounted to a nearly-three-hundred-page-long TBR. It was an excellent introduction to reading possibilities, but also a personal narrative which offered insight not only into literature but into Fuentes’ thinking and preferences. It raised so many more questions than it answered (for me, anyway)!

So far, I’ve read thirteen of the twenty-one I’d hoped to read in 2025 and I feel like I have barely begun: it’s a good feeling.

Have you changed any reading habits this year?