{"id":21339,"date":"2025-07-19T11:29:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/21339\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T11:29:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T11:29:07","slug":"literature-has-completely-changed-my-life-footballer-hector-bellerins-reading-list-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/21339\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Literature has completely changed my life\u2019: footballer H\u00e9ctor Beller\u00edn\u2019s reading list | Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

H\u00e9ctor Beller\u00edn\u2019s summer holidays look a little different from your typical footballer. Rather than pictures from a recent jaunt to Ibiza clubs such as Ushuaia<\/a> or questionable birthday parties<\/a>, his Instagram is dominated by books.<\/p>\n

Images of paperbacks he\u2019s read are all over his feed, a mix of classics and contemporary novels, with a majority from Spain<\/a> and South America.<\/p>\n

Alana Portero\u2019s celebrated (and Pedro Almod\u00f3var-approved<\/a>) novels about queer life in 80s Madrid feature on his read pile, alongside the Mexican Juan Rulfo\u2019s classic surrealist novel Pedro P\u00e1ramo, which inspired a young Gabriel Garci\u0301a Ma\u0301rquez<\/a> to write One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca\u2019s Gypsy Ballads.<\/p>\n

Beller\u00edn, who played for Arsenal<\/a> for nine years before moving back to his native Spain with Real Betis, talks about literature\u2019s transformative power.<\/p>\n

H\u00e9ctor Beller\u00edn Photograph: H&M<\/p>\n

\u201cLiterature has become something that has \u2013 and I know it\u2019s a cliche \u2013 but to me, it has completely changed my life,\u201d he said from a Betis training camp in Portugal.<\/p>\n

Beller\u00edn\u2019s love of literature was sparked during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when the young full-back was isolating in his home in St Albans, Hertfordshire. He began reading the novels of Charles Bukowski<\/a> while he was still playing for Arsenal.<\/p>\n

He made his way through Hollywood<\/a> and Post Office<\/a>, the American writer\u2019s autobiographical debut, which follows the life of the sardonic anti-hero Henry Chinaski. \u201cI was miserable in quarantine,\u201d said Beller\u00edn. \u201cI didn\u2019t know when football was going to come back. I was even drinking a lot \u2026 I had a bit of a tough time. Literature, I\u2019m not gonna say made me survive, but it made my life way easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some footballers might shy away from sharing their love of reading, especially in a climate when anything outside the football bubble is deemed a \u201cdistraction<\/a>\u201d, but Beller\u00edn has made no secret of his interests<\/a> beyond sport.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s flirted with fashion, and even started his own label. He loves photography<\/a>, and believes passionately in the power of art to help with mental health. He has been a vocal advocate for sustainability in football, and in 2022 he criticised the lack of media coverage of conflicts in Palestine, Iraq and Yemen<\/a> compared with Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Beller\u00edn grew up in a house of books. His father had a passion for ancient Greece, which inspired Beller\u00edn\u2019s first name. But between the ages of 19 and 26 he read mostly nonfiction (mirroring the habits of many young men<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Beller\u00edn spent 11 years at Arsenal. Photograph: Catherine Ivill\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Reading was something he did to learn something, rather than for pleasure. \u201cWhen I read something, it had to have a purpose and then I realised it was the other way around,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The work of the German-Swiss novelist Hermann Hesse<\/a> followed Bukowski, but after making his way through 10 books, the Spaniard realised that he\u2019d only read male writers and made a conscious decision to read more women.<\/p>\n

He moved on to The Vegetarian<\/a> by the Nobel prize winner Han Kang, and Naomi Klein\u2019s Doppelganger<\/a>, while cool, contemporary Spanish writers such as Jos\u00e9 Luis Sastre, Adrian Daine, Marta Jim\u00e9nez Serrano, Carolina Yuste and the Granta young writer Cristina Morales<\/a> dominate his book piles.<\/p>\n

Beller\u00edn during an H&M shoot. Photograph: H&M<\/p>\n

Sergio C Fanjul, a culture writer at the Spanish daily El Pa\u00eds, said the list showed Beller\u00edn was \u201cclosely attuned to the pulse of the publishing world\u201d, with writers such as Portero, Leila Guerriero, Marta Jim\u00e9nez Serrano, Juan Tallon and Alejandro Zambra being some of the \u201cmost critically acclaimed writers\u201d of recent years. \u201cI think Beller\u00edn is a reader who doesn\u2019t simply follow mainstream trends,\u201d Fanjul added.<\/p>\n

On his Portuguese training trip he\u2019s brought a book of Leslie Jamison essays, Mary Karr\u2019s Art of Memoir, Sara Mesa\u2019s Cara de Pan, Simon Critchley\u2019s What We Think About When We Think About Football and Samanta Schweblin\u2019s Little Eyes, which the Guardian called \u201cingenious<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Beller\u00edn playing for Sporting. Photograph: Carlos Rodrigues\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The footballer gets recommendations from a writing group he attends every Tuesday night in Seville. Made up of students, doctors and engineers, the group has introduced him to the contemporary Spanish literary scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feed off each other, recommending books and movies. My taste has also changed, because the people I\u2019ve got around me have great taste and give great recommendations, new names and new faces and new ways of writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s only one book that\u2019s defeated him.<\/p>\n

He tried Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s Wuthering Heights in the original English before reverting to the Spanish translation, titled Cumbres Borrascosas. \u201cI couldn\u2019t get through that in English,\u201d Beller\u00edn confessed. \u201cI tried it, but couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"H\u00e9ctor Beller\u00edn\u2019s summer holidays look a little different from your typical footballer. Rather than pictures from a recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-21339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}