Tag: Ines pinto

Project Bookshelf: Ines Pinto

Beach at sunset. The sky is almost completely clear and painted in orange, pink tones. City lights and rocks can be seen on the horizon. The sand is wet and the ocean is calm with barely any waves.
Sesimbra, Portugal. Disclosure: the beach is only this quiet during the winter months.

Growing up, my favorite place to read was on the beach. The sea breeze ruffling through my hair, the warm sand adjusting to my body, and the sound of crashing waves were enough to block out the people around me. My little town was so close to the ocean that I used to go almost every single day from March to October.

The historical fiction books that I loved as a teen are tucked away safely on my mother’s bookshelf. Their pages are stained with signs of salt water, sandy winds, and sunscreen. They encapsulate my past better than any picture could. When I’m home, I like to open them and let my heart swell. These are some of my most precious memories after all.

The English books I bought (because the Portuguese translations were too expensive) all fit on my bedroom’s small bookshelves. My mother doesn’t read these, so I got to keep them all to myself. Shirley Jackson had a shrine, and my favorite books sang from a shelf I reserved just for them.

I knew from an early age that my home was temporary. Within me, a hunger for new horizons was constantly growing. My place had no name, but it was far away. I drank in new languages and new cultures, visiting countries whose capitals I could barely pronounce at times. As a European Union citizen, I was spoiled from birth by the immensity of borderless countries I could dip my toes in. A privilege I took for granted for very long.

So, I flew eastwards and landed in Germany. We had to pick a place to do our exchange period in, you see. And I had picked Paris, Edinburgh, and Montpellier. Safe choices. I knew these places and people from my class were going there too so I wouldn’t be alone. On the day we had to deliver our choices, I woke up sweaty, an uneasiness growing in the pits of my stomach. In an impulse I will never regret, I changed everything. My choices became German cities I had never been to. I sent them out and put the matter to rest until I found out I was bound for Frankfurt am Main all by myself.

In Frankfurt, they had an English theatre and a huge bookshop with tons of English books. My terrible German was not a hindrance, after all. I made friends and met the love of my life there. But most importantly, I came to the very rude conclusion that moving around meant missing the books you had at home. I got a Kobo e-reader, but it was never quite the same.

Since then, I have moved to different countries, cautious of accumulating too many books. In my tiny Leuven studio, my books found their place under my bed and I was constantly bringing them back home, where they would be kept safe. Until I could no longer travel due to the pandemic. COVID-19 made me want to escape reality, so I started binging fantasy books for the first time in my life, amassing quite a collection.

Unfortunately (for my wallet), I also ended up getting lost in incredible Berlin second-hand bookstores, as well as the one with the incredible bagels (the very best in Europe, in my humble opinion), and the one with multiple floors. Unbeknownst to me, I ended up hoarding too many books. My Berlin flat might have been large, but I never got a bookshelf fearing I would fill it up too fast. I stacked them against the walls instead. Aesthetically, it was pleasing. In practice, I nurtured too many bruises trying to get to my next read.

When it came down to packing my things and inevitably moving again, I couldn’t say goodbye to any of my books. DHL benefitted greatly from my unhealthy attachment, but what matters is that they all came back to me. Currently, we’re cramped in a small New York apartment, hoping that we will stay for some time at this destination. We’re missing quite a few though, the ones that are being kept safe in Portugal, so we’re incomplete in a way.

White bookshelves filled with books and decorative objects, such as candles, plush toys and book pots.

I won’t lie and pretend I didn’t go bookshopping since I got to New York. I mean, I wish I hadn’t, but they have signed books over here. I could never resist a signed book, especially since this is not a common feature in the European bookstores I spent my life in. However, no matter how long my to-be-read pile grows, I still make sure my favorites are highlighted so they can bring me some comfort when I’m sad.

Shirley is paired up with Jane Austen, who I’m sure she would potentially enjoy meeting in real life. And they’re promenading right next to my other favorite books. My new copy of The Master & Margarita shines next to Perfume and Sylvia Plath’s poetry because it just makes sense.

My fantasy darlings also stand out on a bookshelf of their own. Strange The Dreamer, The Night Circus, The Starless Sea, and the Winternight Trilogy brought me back from depressing times and made me feel less alone as I started over and over again. So I put them all together.

In the end, I discovered I feel at home wherever my books are. My unquietness still remains within me, but it’s calmed down considerably. Moving is very tiresome after all. I might not be reading on the beach anymore, but the feel of grass against my back and the noises of birds chirping around me have become synonymous with a good time. I bet that in a few years, I will open up my books to discover the marks of lazy park afternoons and smile to myself over these new encapsulated memories.

Ines Pinto (she/her) is from a small beach town near Lisbon, Portugal. She decided to leave those shores behind as she moved around Europe, eventually completing her master’s degree in International Politics. She dreams of a fairer world, so she worked in the non-profit sector to call for the end of corruption and dirty money flows before moving to New York to start a brand new adventure. She is also the proud mother of a spoiled cat named Louis, a certified multilingual Eurovision fan, and a reader with an appreciation for all genres.

Meet Our New Intern: Ines Pinto

Brunette woman smiling, wearing a mid-length dress with stripes of orange and white with pink sneakers and round sunglasses. The background includes three highly ornate golden columns and the facade of a small palace with golden windows and pale green and pink walls.

Growing up, my mother would repeat time and time again the same mantra: “Books are our best friends.” I used to spend hours touching the books she kept on the lower shelves, so it made sense that she wanted me to believe that. It would be far more frustrating having to deal with a toddler who destroyed the books she collected than simply transforming me into a fellow bookworm. So, this introduction will very much be a representation of who I am through the books I read.

My mother would take me to bookstores and let me pick whatever books caught my attention. At ten, I developed a weird obsession with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and a thirst for tragedy and love stories. I devoured the pages of Margaret George’s The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Susan Vreeland’s The Passion of Artemisia, and Carolly Erickson’s The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette. I was a historical fiction devotee, who only cared about stories focused on tragic women. But to my peers, I was just a weird kid.

During a particularly unforgiving hot summer, I had nothing new to read, so I wandered through my mother’s bookshelves. The Lisbon Book Fair was not until two weeks from then, and I was extremely bored and unwilling to venture into the outside world before nightfall. That’s how I came to meet Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. While their stories mainly starred men, I couldn’t help but feel embraced by the melancholy and dark humor present in all of them. The Idiot by Dostoyevsky became a favorite by the time I acquired the more age-appropriate Hunger Games trilogy—which I adored!

Reading transported me to different realities, allowing me to live in the shoes of others. Writing, on the other end, was where I found the comfort of transforming all of my wildest ideas into something palpable. I found myself writing about worlds I made up in my head and characters who struggled with the same things as me. In a way, it helped me comprehend the issues I was facing, taking away a lot of the anxiety of starting high school, university and, later, moving abroad.

Whenever I reminisce over my past lives, I tend to attach books to them. The first time I kissed a boy, I was in the middle of the first Twilight book. When I inevitably got my heart broken, I found myself re-reading chapters of Anna Karenina until I became sick of the book. The day I had a meltdown over my degree choice, I wallowed my way up to a mall bookstore and found The Bird’s Nest—this would kickstart an addiction to Shirley Jackson’s writing and a shrine to her work that has since been taken down due to my continuously moving to different places. The day I started to plan my move to Berlin from Lisbon, I had just finished The Master & Margarita—my favorite book of all time and completely unrelated to the moving decision as far as I’m aware.

Books gave me the gift of empathy. I understood how my lived reality was shaped by many factors I could not control—my skin tone, my passport, my education. As a firm believer in the human right to dignity, and that we should all be equal under the law, I was fuelled to use my research skills to improve the world. Working for Transparency International, an anti-corruption NGO, was extremely fulfilling due to my intrinsic need to help others. Contributing to Sundress Publication’s mission aligns this with my love for literature and the belief that books can make us better people.

Ines Pinto (she/her) is from a small beach town near Lisbon, Portugal. She decided to leave those shores behind as she moved around Europe, eventually completing her master’s degree in International Politics. She dreams of a fairer world, so she worked in the non-profit sector to call for the end of corruption and dirty money flows before moving to New York to start a brand new adventure. She is also the proud mother of a spoiled cat named Louis, a certified multilingual Eurovision fan, and a reader with an appreciation for all genres.