ADRIANA DE BARROS




NAME: adriana de barros
BORN: 1976
LOCATION: caldas da rainha, portugal
OCCUPATION: graphic designer
WEBSITES: scene360.com | breathewords.com

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What is your favourite reading place?
At night, when I go to bed. I plug in my reading floor lamp, and just read for a few hours in bed. It’s quiet and relaxing. [I should do this more often]. I know many people who purposely read to fall asleep — that process has never worked for me. I end up enthusiastic with the reading and then have trouble sleeping.


Remind us of the last book you read. How interesting was it?
I’m half way through an English grammar book titled, Compose Yourself and write good English by Harry Blamires. It is a technical book that I have been reading on and off. It has taken longer to read it than a novel, because the goal is to learn from the book, and sometimes it requires rereading parts to fully understand it.

I just finished reading a book called, A Century of Movie Posters : From Silent to Art House by Emily King. The title was suggested to me on a design forum in response to a post I had left. I have been looking for key artist of the film poster, The Silence of the Lambs (1991). I’ve been writing a study about the film, and I am missing this important detail about the poster. After a year of looking, I posted a note about it on a forum, and this book was suggested. I’m not in luck though, because some posters have credits and this one doesn’t. As for the book, I don’t like its cover design, however the inner pages are graphically appealing — there are many interesting film posters. What I also didn’t like about the book is it is a “Poster Book” and there is more info about the Directors’ of the films, than actual poster and design information. Nonetheless, I love reading about directors, so I found the book useful for that reason. It is misleading to buy it, and then not have enough info about posters.

I’m now reading a novel, Choke by Chuck Palahniuk (bestselling author of Fight Club). I have all his books in first edition and signed on titlepage. I first read Fight Club — I absolutely love this book — and then started buying his other releases through the years. This is the 2nd book I read of this author, maybe in time I’ll conclude reading them all.





Look into your book shelf, what is your preferred reading genre? (E.g. detective novels, short stories, specialized/technical books...)
I have a collection of signed and modern first edition books. I used to collect and sell books via online auctions. I have a reasonable number of novels, from a signed edition of "To Kill a Mockingbird" to all signed/first editions of Chuck Palahniuk books. I haven’t read all the books yet, but a great part I have. I wish I had more time for "Books!" I read a lot of technical articles (web and more) and artist biographies for preparation of reviews for Scene 360. Basically, it’s all about paper count (print out pages), I have piles of papers I have read at home. Every time I clean these piles, it’s like two garbage bags full. So I read a lot of print outs.

I also like to read magazines (not the gossip kind) like Computer Arts, Rolling Stone, Film Review, Premiere... recently have been reading fine art mags such as Contemporary and Umbigo.

My book shelves at home have fiction and non-fiction novels, and web and art books. In my office, I have almost all my art, design, and web books. I use them for inspiration sometimes. I have a lack of space for all my books, but I would like to have a lot more books. I just bought two contemporary artist books, Gottfried Helnwein and Kent Williams.


Where do you store your books?
On book shelves. And some unfortunately on the floor leaning against the book shelve. I have a lack of space right now.





Everyone has a special book that is cherished in their mind; one that they could recommend to other readers. What book(s) is/are your all time best?
I rarely read a book twice, but did with The Hours by Michael Cunningham. I really liked the whole book. It’s perfect and beautiful. I like the complexity of the dialogue: the way the characters interwine from different eras; the short chapters — each being titled with the name of the three main characters, a division of chapters by story/character. A few years after reading the book, I was curious to watch the new released film. The cast selection was well-done, although I think the storyline was lost somewhat with the visuals. Much of the book is spoken through thoughts of the characters, which you read and become clear, but in the film it wasn’t easy to follow unless you had already read the book. I noticed that the thoughts were just faded into silent moments, and it wasn’t that obvious as was the book. Meaning you lose important details, character feelings. The book won the Pulitzer Prize, I saw it once on amazon and bought it. Since then, I’ve enjoyed Cunningham’s writing.
Okay, now I’m remembering other books I liked just as much, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marques, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, and Naked by David Sedrais.


There is great writing and there is also a lot of bad writing. What was the worst book you have read? What was tasteless about it?
Bad As I Wanna Be by Dennis Rodman. It was a popular book when it came out, and out of curiosity I read it. There was a chapter that wasn’t bad, but overall the book was awful. Rodman repeats his basketball stories like crazy, it’s very repetitive. The whole theme and his life doesn’t become interesting at all. I read The Long Hard Road Out of Hell by Marilyn Manson, and that was well written. It was interesting and surprising.