MEDIA DIET
By:
September 23, 2026
A weekly series exploring the media “input” of a group of people — HILOBROW’s friends and contributors — whose “output” we admire.
Sónia has been a valued HILOBROW contributor since 2021. Her first post was on the topic of CABBAGE TUREEN. Her most recent contributions to this publication include: RUNAWAY BURRO | CARNATION AGITPROP.
Lisbon…
HILOBROW: What work of literature (old or new) would you recommend to someone trying to make sense of today’s world?
SÓNIA MARQUES: I would recommend Salman Rushdie’s books and some reading to understand his biography. Books such as Shalimar the Clown, The Golden House, and Midnight’s Children took me across continents and allowed me to share with the author the possibilities of coexistence between different religions.
And, truly, his life has defied fiction. Salman Rushdie is a testament to our times. The Satanic Verses sparked a cultural war. The years spent between bodyguards fleeing Sharia law and the recent attack in New York tell us so much about the political and religious tragedies of the modern world. I remember the endless discussions about freedom of expression. How did he react after the attack that blinded him and almost killed him? “There is value in listening to voices that offend us.”
HILOBROW: What work of nonfiction (old or new) would you recommend to someone trying to make sense of today’s world?
SÓNIA MARQUES: I find many answers to the current turmoil in reading philosophy. And there are two authors who particularly resonate with me. One of them is Byung-Chul Han. His work on positivity, the influence of cell phones on our daily lives, the idea of the “like” as an amen, and the way he explains the inevitability of burnout… are all extremely relevant ideas that have helped me understand and also live in the present day.
Another author is René Girard, a literary critic whose concepts such as “scapegoat” and “mimesis” have shown me how inexorable and inevitable “othering,” destruction, and violence are. It is heavy, confrontational reading, but important for understanding the fuel that has ignited the current shift to the right.
HILOBROW: What are your reading habits?
SÓNIA MARQUES: Reading for me is like going to the gym. Something to do at a good weekly pace, trying to practice daily to keep me alert and productive. Fundamentally, it is constant reading that keeps me attentive and able to respond to different client challenges. I always have a book with me, to read while waiting for a friend, to take advantage of the 15 minutes before a meeting, and to read during subway and train trips.
Besides the daily practice I every year try to do a week of “only reading” in a library. At those times, reading is a kind of marathon. I go through about 200 pages a day and try to cover a given scientific area in 5 to 7 days. It’s a dive, a luxurious possibility of immersing myself in a new technique, giving time to cohesive texts in a specific field. During these periods, I read full-time, 6 to 8 hours a day, and I like to read among university students during exam periods. The air gets thick as their stress is palpable. These yearly weeks are a kind of bubble, far from Lisbon, with books in boxes in the trunk of my car and the library as my daily retreat.
When I read in libraries I also do extensive research in these spaces. I don’t look within my core areas of research. I do the opposite. I try to understand “what is supposed to be read” in different disciplines. The shelves give me the order. The order of the books, the order of the disciplines and they show connections between authors, themes and ideas. They uncover the neighbors of what I did not know were related. They satisfy my curiosity about what psychologists and architects study on the same topic. Each shelf, so close to the other, brings together different courses and disparate specialties. In times of information overload, seeing the results of those acts of classification seems like a balm to me.
HILOBROW: What’s the best movie you’ve ever seen?
SÓNIA MARQUES: The Decline of the American Empire, and the following The Barbarian Invasions, both from Denys Arcand, are probably my favourite movies.
Note: This Q&A was cross-posted from our sister website, SEMIOVOX.
MEDIA DIET series: MATTHEW BATTLES | ADRIENNE CREW | HOLLY INTERLANDI | CAROLYN KELLOGG | MARK KINGWELL | FLOURISH KLINK | ADAM McGOVERN | CHARLIE MITCHELL | TOM NEALON | ANNIE NOCENTI | GARY PANTER | LYNN PERIL | JONATHAN PINCHERA | NICHOLAS ROMBES | CARLO ROTELLA | LUCY SANTE | SETH | MIKE WATT | JUDITH ZISSMAN | & many others! Visit the SERIES INDEX.