I arrive at the Parcir bookshop, in Manresa, to preach, as authors are let loose around Sant Jordi. As it's early, I ask the booksellers (we've known each other for many years) to let me have a corner to write. And here I am, allowed to sit at the counter. "But they'll come to ask you for books," they warn me. Nothing makes me happier than playing bookseller or bartender. I sit down. On my desk screen, there's Les gratituds, by Delphine de Vigan, pending entry. The customers laugh and talk about me as "this new intern".
A boy approaches me. He's a boy with spike bracelets and necklaces, with a short-sleeved black t-shirt and a messy haircut. He asks me for a book. Trencar el cercle, by Colleen Hoover. "I'll see if we have it now," I tell him. And he emphasizes: "I want it in Catalan." I get goosebumps all over. He must be sixteen or seventeen and dressed like one of the characters from Els joves" (a reference he surely doesn't know). We don't have it, but we do have another title by the author, who is a bestseller author, called Confesiones. He thinks. "It's for my sister and I don't know if she'll have this other one," he says. Therefore, it's a book to be read by a young girl, like him, who reads regularly.
The booksellers explain to me that young people buy books. The one he's asking for is a fiction that tells about the abuse suffered by the protagonist's mother and it has sold a lot. We can argue endlessly whether this book or that book is literature (they all are) and whether it's good or bad literature (that will depend on us).
The act of reading (turning signs into worlds) is unique and radically different from the act of watching a story on screen. It's a complicated, intelligent, and pleasantly difficult act. Those who complain about the banality of young people's readings (especially young girls') usually don't read anything at all. That's why, today, the booksellers, the customers, and the writer, who are, above all, readers, look at the young man with a desire to adopt him, he seems so kind to us.
