During my summer holiday in July of this year, I managed to realize part of my personal goal: to fill myself with readings of interesting books.
After this summer break, I have concluded that reading eliminates egocentrism and invites reflection, empathy and understanding; it expands geographical horizons and also mental horizons.
A good book makes you want to live, you go to it like to the arms of a loved one, as soon as you can, running, looking for any moment to join with the book and share the intimacy.
The reading of books amplifies, revives and exercises meditation, it invites you to tranquility and gives you a certain happiness.
On one occasion I heard in a lecture that reading revives regions of our brain directly linked to memory, emotions, past experiences.
There is a book for each age, for each mood. I believe that the love of reading should accompany us throughout life, from childhood to old age.
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The above is extracted/translated from a letter in the Spanish newspaper, El Pais, from Alberto Álvarez Pérez in Seville, published on August 29th 2018.
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How very true! I have made the same experience. Sometimes, I will have a certain memory of an event, a time and place directly linked with what I was reading at the time. “We were going to Munich, my sister was with me, she wore a leather jacket, I had put my favourite perfume on, I was reading so-and-so book at the moment and during our ride to Munich, the protagonist was doing so-and-so.” I did a re-read of Nabokov’s “Lolita” this summer and I realised that as I was reading certain scenes and passages, I could clearly remember the places I had been while I read it the first time, 14 or 15 years ago, even the people who were around me in that particular moment. Reading it again, blooming with its extraordinarily beautiful language, all its allegories and multi-lingual wordplays and jokes, I almost felt enlightened as I understood how much of it went right by me when I read it the first time. I often feel that the books I read throughout my life were and still are my best teachers.
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