My book, my shadow

Books. What can be said about them? Or rather, what can be written about them that still hasn’t been? Honestly I wouldn’t know how to answer. But what I can say, or write, is that I like them and I’m not the only one. Whenever I travel by bus or by metro I see people devouring books eagerly, when I go to my friends´ homes I see the shelves weighed down with them, and when I walk through the bookstores and book fairs, they seem to be always crowded. Why do we like books? Well, there must be many reasons; they teach us very interesting things about deep feelings, about our history, science and many other subjects.

When we were children fairy tales, with their stereotyped characters, taught us morals, the importance of proper social behaviour as well as the threats of life, all decorated with beautiful illustrations. From this age I remember reading books from the publisher “Barco de Vapor” and I was fascinated by Andersen and Perrault.

When I grew up and started high school, I read books like the gripping Diary of Anne Frank, East Wind West Wind by Pearl S. Buck and Like Water For Chocolate by the Mexican Laura Esquivel, which, with its brilliant magical realism, showed me about more profound feelings such as love and passion. At this point, the simple characters stood aside to let more complicated ones pass. What’s more, the happy endings turned into unpleasant situations, where right and wrong were not so obvious. No illustrations were needed beyond the words, as mesmerizing descriptions drew the stories in our imagination.

Later, when I went to college I became more interested in books related to my studies, such as the classic 1984 by George Orwell, the disturbing Brave New World by Aldous Huxley or the spellbinding The Fear of Freedom by Erich Fromm. With these I learned about the human behaviour and the social construction of reality made by humans themselves.

Now that I look back I see that books have accompanied me my whole life, and I have learned many of the things I know from them. But I also see a parallel evolution between my life and the books I have read. What I feel is that I choose books depending on my interests and curiosity at a particular moment and, more than this, I choose them because I am looking for answers to the questions and problems that I have in understanding this world.

Wildcat