An essential series and one of the best books of 2023: what you cannot miss this week

The week ahead, with Jordi Garrigós

Some of the things we hope not to miss in the next seven days

I will begin the grief caused by the breakup of Zoo by listening to Malifeta, the project of the Valencians' guitarist, Arnau Giménez, and Mireia Matoses (from Pupil·les). After a while of releasing songs created during the pandemic, during which they both lived together and composed, their first album has just been released, Mitologia, a compilation of tracks they have been making over the last three years and which are now seeing the light of day. Ideal for missing Panxo and company's band a little less, because here there is also rap and love for the beats.

I will recover Little Brother, published by Blackie Books, the editorial success by Ibrahima Balde, now that Solito is making great stories of migration and displacement fashionable again. Balde's is a very hard first-person odyssey about the search for a lost brother with a narrative that, if you weren't told it was real, you would think was fiction. One of the most moving books I have read in recent years.

I will remember one of the greatest series of my life. I am speaking, obviously, of The Sopranos, the masterpiece by David Chase, which humanized the New Jersey mafia to limits never seen before. We will not start making a list of virtues of the entire crew at the Bada Bing, because we would lack all the space in the world, so we will limit ourselves to making a recommendation: if you haven't seen it, start it today. Available on HBO.

The week in review, with Thaïs Gutiérrez

Notes on what we have seen, felt, tasted and, in short, lived in the last seven days

I have returned to listen to one of my favorite podcasts, which I had forgotten about for months. El Deforme Semanal (Ideal Total) maintains its good form at the hands of the indefatigable Lucía Litjmaer and Isa Calderón, who in this episode talk to us about elegance and all the issues derived from this term by reviewing some great icons like Isabella Blow. 

I have been gifted The Great Snake, by Pierre Lemaitre, which has the charm of being the first crime novel that the famous French writer wrote, but which remained hidden in a drawer for decades. With an original plot –a 60-year-old lady who is actually a hitwoman– it hooks the reader from the first page. A gift for fans of the French author.

I have celebrated the arrival at bookstores in Spanish of Solito, the memoir by Javier Zamora published by Periscopi. It is the true story of the author, a young boy from El Salvador who recounts the journey he made alone and on foot from his country to the United States at only 9 years old. An odyssey full of fear and pain that represents the journey of so many people who embark on this trek every year and which was considered one of the best books of 2023 by the The New York Times.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about the interview that Pablo Motos conducted this week with Sofía Vergara on El Hormiguero, a show I try not to watch because the host's sexism infuriates me. In this case, however, I made an exception to see how the Colombian actress eats presenter Motos for breakfast and turns all the questions around to end up ridiculing him. If you haven't seen it, it's worth checking out.

More plan and activity proposals

• What you can do this weekend
• Plans to do with kids
• Series premiering this month
• What you can do in the Girona regions
• New restaurants to discover
• The human tower agenda