MOVIE 2 - apr 22, 2025 - TUE
RIO, I LOVE YOU
Directed by: Various
Released in 2014, it's the third installment in the Cities of Love series, following Paris, je t´aime (2006) and New York, I Love You (2009). Like its predecessors, it comprises ten short and unique love stories set in different area of Rio, and features Brazilian and foreign directors, such as Fernando Meirelles, John Turturro, and Nadine Labaki, as well as actors, like Rodrigo Santoro, Harvey Keitel, and Vincent Cassel.
It´s a visually compelling tribute to Rio, a love letter to its landscapes and neighborhoods. From Ipanema and Lapa to Vidigal and Copacabana, each story shows a distinct facet of the city, and as a whole they constitute a mosaic of visual styles.
If you love Rio, or want to fall in love with it, this film is worth a watch, for the kaleidoscope of impressions it leaves behind. In addition, samba, football, street life, religion, and beach culture are all woven into the narrative fabric, giving the whole a distinctive local flavor.
BOOK 94 - MAR 22, 2025 - SAT
DOM CASMURRO: A NOVEL
Published in 1899, it´s one of the most celebrated novels in Brazilian literature. It´s about Bento Santiago, known as Dom Casmurro, an aging man who decides to write his memoirs.
He recounts his youth in 19th-century Rio de Janeiro, his love for Capitu - his childhood friend turned wife - and the collapse of their marriage. What begins as a love story turns into a tale of suspicion and obsession, as Bento becomes convinced that Capitu has been unfaithful to him with his best friend, Escobar.
But Bento’s jealousy apparently clouds his judgment, so readers are led to question whether Capitu betrayed him or if it was his paranoia. Machado de Assis plays with ambiguity, never providing a definitive answer, making this brief and elegant novel a literary puzzle that continues to spark debate.
BOOK 86 - MAR 14, 2025 - fri
CROW BLUE: A NOVEL
It´s about Vanja, a 13-year-old girl from Rio de Janeiro left with no family after her mother´s death. So she´s sent to live in Colorado with her stepfather, Fernando, who becomes her guardian.
Fernando, a former guerrilla fighter in Brazil, lives a lonely routine as a security guard at the Denver Public Library. Vanja finds her new home very strange, from the dry climate that ranges from hot to extreme cold, to the immigrant displaced condition.
But she´s determined to search for her biological father. With the help of Fernando, she traces her mother's footsteps and discovers the truth about herself amid Brazil´s past military dictatorship and Latin American revolutionary movements. Adriana Lisboa´s prose blends personal and political narratives in a drama that resonates far beyond its origins.
BOOK 78 - MAR 06, 2025 - THU
CAPTAINS OF THE SANDS
by Jorge Amado
Published in 1937, it´s about a gang of street children in Salvador, capital of Bahia. The main characters are Pedro Bala, their leader, Professor, a book-loving dreamer, Gato, a smooth-talking delinquent, and Dora, the only girl in the group.
Surviving on their wits and daring in torrid slums, they prey on the middle class with petty crimes. But when a public outcry demands the capture of the “little criminals”, their fate becomes a sad moving drama of friendship, love, hope, and resilience. Jorge Amado´s prose blends realism, social critique, and lyrical storytelling.
In the year of publication, 808 copies of Captains of the Sands were burnt at a square in Salvador as communist propaganda. Afterwards it would sell 4.3 million copies and become Amado's best-selling book.
BOOK 70 - FEB 26, 2025 - WED
LOST WORLD
In Lost World, Máiquel, a former hitman, has been a fugitive for ten years, since his girlfriend Erica ran off with their daughter Samantha to live with an evangelical pastor.
One day Máiquel´s aunt dies, leaving him a house and a savings account. He withdraws his newly received cash and sets out to find the man who stole his girlfriend and daughter.
Published in 2006 and set in the Brazilian state of Acre, in the Amazon region, this novel follows a troubled assassin on a quest for revenge through a remote, lawless, and brutal frontier. Patrícia Melo's fast-paced prose weaves psychological insight with a noir-infused portrayal of the story´s backdrop, elevating it beyond a standard crime thriller.
BOOK 62 - FEB 18, 2025 - TUE
HOUR OF THE STAR
Narrated by Rodrigo, a cosmopolitan guy, it´s the story of Macabéa, a poor and unattractive young woman living in the slums of Rio. She loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her cruel and opportunistic boyfriend. In her underfed and miserable condition, she dreams to be like Marilyn Monroe.
Rodrigo realizes that despite her hardships Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn’t seem to realize how unhappy she´s supposed to be, as she moves through life with a passive acceptance of her fate, which culminates in a tragic end that ironically grants her a momentary sense of importance, her hour of the star.
Published in 1977, shortly before Lispector’s death, this novel sets its heroine in contrast to an empty narrator, uprooting preconceived notions about poverty, identity, happiness, and love. It´s also a tale about the limits of human understanding and the loneliness of those on the margins of society.
BOOK 54 - FEB 10, 2025 - MON
ROOTS OF BRAZIL
Published in 1936, it´s an interpretation of the process of formation of Brazilian society, addressing its Iberian heritage, as well as the Native American and African, and their mixed impact on politics, economic development, and way of life.
Sérgio Buarque explains how a predominantly European culture flourished in an exotic tropical environment, highlighting the adaptations that marked the cultural transfers from Portugal to its American colony.
He introduces the concept of "cordial man", a defining trait of Brazilian social relations, where personal ties and emotion override formal institutions and the rule of law.
Roots of Brazil is a brief and engaging essay. It helped to set the parameters of Brazilian historiography and even the country´s self-image, continuing to influence new generations.
BOOK 46 - FEB 02, 2025 - SUN
HIPPIE
by Paulo Coelho
Hippie is a blend of memoir and fiction. Set in the 1970s, the novel follows young Paulo Coelho, a dreamer from Rio de Janeiro longing to travel and discover the meaning of life.
During a stay in Amsterdam, he meets Karla, a Dutch woman who invites him to join her on the Magic Bus, that travels from Amsterdam to Istanbul and across Central Asia to Kathmandu, Nepal.
As they cross Europe and Asia, encountering mystics and adventurers, Paulo and Karla explore love, self-discovery, and the search for spiritual enlightenment. Through their experiences, Hippie captures the free-spirited idealism of the era.
BOOK 38 - JAN 25, 2025 - SAT
1808: THE FLIGHT OF THE EMPEROR
It narrates the arrival of the Portuguese royal family at Rio de Janeiro in 1808, flying from the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte marching on Lisbon.
European monarchs had been dethroned or forced to take refuge in foreign lands before, but none had ever set foot in the Americas, much less relocated with their family, court, and government.
Until then, Brazil functioned as a rural and fragmented colony with no national sentiment. With Dom João, ports were open, schools founded, roads and factories built, books and newspapers printed, giving Brazil greater autonomy.
In 1815, Rio became the first and only city in the Americas to be named capital of a European empire - the United Kingdom of Brazil, Portugal and Algarves. In fact, the arrival of Dom João ended the Brazilian colonial period and started its independence process.
In 1821, after Napoleon’s fall, Dom João sailed back to Portugal, leaving in Brazil his eldest son, Dom Pedro I, who in 1822 declared Brazil´s independence. Many historians argue that Brazil indirectly owes both its independence and territorial integrity during the turbulent 19th century to Napoleon.
BOOK 30 - JAN 17, 2025 - FRI
It´s a crime thriller set against the background of true political ocurrences happened in August 1954 in Rio de Janeiro. It´s also a historical novel, as it re-creates the atmosphere of the 1950s in Rio, then Brazil's capital and the center of political intrigue and corruption.
It intertwines two plots, one private, another public: the former involves police officer Alberto Mattos; the latter is a chain of events that starts with the attempted assassination of Carlos Lacerda, a famous journalist and political enemy of president Getúlio Vargas, and culminates in Vargas's suicide on August 24, 1954. Mattos is assigned to solve the murder of a wealthy entrepreneur. One of the few agents not on the take from local mafia bosses, Mattos´s investigation collides with the conspiracy to depose Vargas, and, like the president, he has to confront his own fate.
BOOK 22 - JAN 09, 2025 - THU
It´s a short-story collection all set in Rio de Janeiro slums, as the author narrates different experiences of poor boys growing up in the early years of the 21st century.
Drawing on his own experience, Geovani Martins uses his neighborhood slang to capture the texture of daily life in a slum, where every day is shadowed by a ubiquitous drug culture, the constant threat of the police, and poverty, violence, and racial oppression.
And yet these are also tales of friendship, romance, and momentary relief, as in “Rolézim,” where a group of teenagers head to the beach. Martins´s stories, all uncompromising in their realism and diverse in narrative form, explore the feelings of invisibility that define the realities of so many in Rio’s underclass.
BOOK 17 - JAN 04, 2025 - SAT
Adamastor is a freshly divorced, frustrated bureaucrat trying to reinvent his life. Richie is a young, struggling actor. Together with Ernesto, an expat Argentine showman, they create Eden-Brazil, an ecotourism destination in a stunning swath of coastal rainforest.
Inspired to provide visitors with the ultimate return to nature, they decide to stage the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, complete with Adam, Eve, snake, apple, and so on. But recreating an earthly paradise as something more than another roadside attraction is no easy feat.
In this charming, tragicomic tale, Moacyr Scliar weaves together a serious and yet funny parable of environmentalist ideals clashing with the realities of local politics, global consumer culture, and competing visions of authentic nature.
BOOK 12 - DEC 30, 2024 - Mon
THE SILENCE OF THE RAIN
In a parking garage in the center of Rio de Janeiro, corporate executive Ricardo Carvalho is found dead in his car. It appears that he has been robbed and murdered. But the clues are few. Just the kind of case that is always assigned to inspector Espinosa. Not a typical detective, he has the mind of a philosopher, the heart of a romantic, and enough experience to realize that things are rarely as they first seem.
As Espinosa attempts to unravel the mystery of what really happened to Carvalho and his secretary, Rose, who disappeared shortly afterward, he discovers that the businessman had recently taken out a million-dollar life insurance policy. And there’s another complication: Espinosa’s attraction to Carvalho’s beautiful widow, who is also one of the prime suspects. When two more bodies turn up, Espinosa is forced to shift the investigation into high gear.
Hurtling to a surprising conclusion, The Silence of the Rain is an unconventional detective novel with a distinctly Rio de Janeiro flavor.
BOOK 7 - DEC 25, 2024 - Wed
SELECTED PLAYS
Nelson Rodrigues has been widely regarded as Brazil´s greatest playwright. In 1943, he started revolutionizing Brazilian theater with Wedding Dress, praised for its psychological depth, powerful characters, bold exploration of sexual taboos, and use of colloquial dialogues.
He wrote other seminal plays, like the ones in this anthology: Waltz No. 6, All Nudity Will Be Punished, Forgive Me for Your Betrayal, Family Portraits, Black Angel, and Seven Little Kitties.
Nelson (as he was known) didn´t confine himself to theater. In the 1950s, he became popular with his newspaper column Life As It Is, while also writing novels, movie screenplays, and chronicles on soccer. He has strongly influenced new Brazilian generations of not only playwrights, but also movie makers, soap opera creators, actors, journalists, and writers at large.
In Rio de Janeiro, the Maracanã Stadium is officially named Estádio Mário Filho, in honor of Nelson´s older brother Mário Rodrigues Filho, a renowned sports journalist.
BOOK 2 - DEC 20, 2024 - Fri
PERFECT DAYS
In Perfect Days, Teo Avelar, a medical student, kidnaps the girl of his dreams and embarks on a delirious road trip across Brazil.
He´s a loner, living with his paraplegic mother and a dog in Rio de Janeiro. He doesn't have friends, and the only time he feels an emotion is in the presence of a corpse at medical school, that is, until he meets Clarice.
She's his opposite: exotic, spontaneous, unafraid to speak her mind. An aspiring writer, she's working on a screenplay called Perfect Days about three friends who go on a road trip in search of romance. Teo begins to stalk her, and when she rejects him he kidnaps her, and they embark upon an odyssey through the same route outlined in her screenplay.
He´s sure that time is all he needs to prove to Clarice they are made for each other and to make her fall in love with him. But as the journey progresses, his behavior becomes darker, stopping at nothing to ensure that no one meddles in their life together.