10 "Without knowing exactly how, you end up with a house overflowing with water": that's how it begins The magnet and thingsThe unclassifiable first book by artist, teacher, and philologist Mateu Coll (Pollença, 1962). Not surprisingly, objects and the idea of collecting (or accumulating) are some of the central themes of the volume, which explores the relationship we have with the things we own or want. "You go after them, the searches, the objects," says Coll. "I've bought and collected like crazy, as if the world were ending, an ark in the middle of a flood, a pair and more of every kind." And so he draws us into a discourse that oscillates between a highly personal memoir and an essay, between deeply personal thought and almost poetic prose.

]]> After all these days of buying, wrapping, unwrapping, and rearranging or repurposing the objects we call "gifts," it seems more than logical to consider what these lifeless piles of things are and what their purpose is—the things we covet, adopt, and shelter, or discard without a second thought. Once upon a time, any object could hold magic, was susceptible to an alchemy like the one Damià Rotger explores in his poems: the polished shard of broken mirror, a fan, or a pick and shovel offer companionship not in an everyday way, but in a revelatory one. However, today, our society, compulsively accumulating and simultaneously obsessively seeking novelty, generally lives surrounded by artificial materials and mass-produced items; or, in a minority, is enveloped in precious minerals extracted ignobly and wrapped in luxury pieces that exude the misery of their artisans.

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