As is already known, there are two types of readers, those of us who are still anchored to paper and those who have let themselves be seduced by new technologies. At the end of the summer, I heard someone praising the convenience of the e-book for going to the beach because it doesn't weigh anything, it doesn't get wet, it doesn't get damaged. I was shocked, theatricalizing my reaction a little: there is nothing I like more than that great novel I have read by the sea that ends up crumpled, the pages wavy and, when you go to put it on the shelf, a few grains of sand still fall to the ground.

In this article I would like to make two recommendations. The first is that you read The Abandoned Woman, by Balzac, which Viena Edicions has published in the collection Petits Plaers, translated by Josep Maria Pinto. The second recommendation is that, if you are one of those who have the habit —like me— of reading with a pencil in hand to underline especially beautiful or interesting phrases or paragraphs, this time you let it go. I let it go when I realized I was underlining practically everything.