Reading can save your life.

 

 

Well, having a look at the picture with the grandma and granddaughter reminded me of my own childhood. In this photo, I’m not sure if the grandmother in the picture is trying to teach her granddaughter something or  it is the other way around. When I was a child, I remembered my grandma telling me stories from books. Being able to read at her age, she is 94 nowadays, is awesome since she was born in the late 1920s and despite those years of hunger, my great- grandmother managed to pay ( I’m afraid a kind of barter or something) a man  who, riding a donkey, used to go to far away cottages to teach kids to read and write. It is marvellous. I admired the fact that my great grandmother put her children in the first place in order to have a better future life. And it helped indeed. My grandmother was the only woman ( on top of that she was a widow) in town who had a shop in the 1970s so being able to read and write came in handy.

The picture with the kids reading in school brought back some memories. I have never been very keen on reading , at least when I was at school. Maybe because other things appealed to me, such as photography, discovering rock and roll groups from the 60s, cycling or playing football. I didn’t read for pleasure but I did because it was compulsory. I am jealous when I’m at the beach and I see a whole foreign family reading their own books, no matter who old they are or how hot it can be, they are lying there submerged in their stories. I envy that. ( I said “foreign” because I haven’t seen many Spanish families doing the same although I know there must be some)

As an English teacher, I prefer reading books in English since it’s a great opportunity to learn new vocab and continue being “in touch” with the language. We all know that if we don’t practice a language, we tend to forget everything about it.

Right now I don’t have much time since a have a two-year-old daughter but when I do have some, mainly at night,  what I read is a newspaper online, BBC News to be precise. I used to read Dan Brown’s or Follet’s. It didn’t matter if the book was heavier than me but I really enjoyed the stories ( I couldn’t put it down).

I know that an e-reader device saves you space, it’s very light and it has plenty of room for a huge library to carry in your pocket but I’d choose paper books. I love the touch and the smell of paper. I usually buy second-hand books, I like to imagine who the former owner was and their life.