There are people who buy a book for Sant Jordi to give to someone who never reads any books, which is like me being given a ticket to go see Formula 1. There are people who lament that there are people who buy books for Sant Jordi who then don't read them. But how many of us don't have books from previous years piling up that we haven't opened yet? There are people who want the celebration to be perfect. But perfection is a theoretical concept.
Reading is not mandatory, nor does it make us freer, nor does it make us better, nor any other virtue that can be attributed solely to reading. Reading is a pleasure for those who like to read, and reading is an act of solitude that is increasingly done in company. Silent reading parties, they call them. Reading near other people who are also reading. Each their own book. What used to be done in libraries is now done in other, supposedly more exotic, places. The human being has a permanent need to invent things, however absurd they may be or seem to us. Or all at once. The reading clubs of the Barcelona library network have doubled their offer in ten years. These clubs offer the possibility of reading books that many people would not choose for themselves and, at the same time, commenting on the reading with other people who have ventured into the same landscape. It is a way of relating to tangible people, beyond the characters in a novel. Books keep us company, but not everyone is satisfied with books. They need reading a book to also be a social act. Books depict who we are as people, but people, ultimately, want real people. The need for contact with other human beings can be found exclusively by reading, without having to leave home. But each person knows their home and their need to leave it.
Reading can be wonderful or torture. We have known extraordinary people who do not read books but who read the land, and also a bunch of imbeciles who have their heads full of readings. Most men recommend books written by men (I'm not saying it, a study says so) and women recommend books written by men and by women in a much more equitable way. Reading does not bring us closer to equality, but it continues to teach us differences. Reading, in a world full of utilities, does not specifically serve any purpose. Even less so when AI can read for you. But kicking a ball with your foot or with a racket also serves no purpose, in strict terms of utility, and many people are fond of it. To see it and to practice it. But the advantage of reading, unlike these other activities, is that, in principle, it is much safer for our physical integrity. And books themselves, closed, do have utility. They can serve to prop up a table, to support a mobile phone photo, or to soundproof a room by filling it with shelves full of books. The day books disappear definitively, houses will be sadder. Like the houses where they have already disappeared.
The mobile phone has taken hours of reading and many other things from us. Before, awards were collected with a speech written on paper, and now the speech is read on the phone. Even if you are given a literary award. But let's not talk about awards because when you write, the award, however cliché it may sound, is that someone reads you. That someone chooses your book. But let whoever wants to read it. That pleasure is incompatible with obligation.
