Personal blog: "Promiscuous reading", by bonzopoe

For those who begin to read, one of the great dilemmas is precisely what to read. And if our references are the classics that are read in school, totally or partially, during the first years of our academic training, such as Don Quixote by Cervantes, or The Iliad by Homer, to mention just a couple of examples, it is not a minor theme.

Overcoming the natural aversion to reading that school generates in many of us in our first years of life, the recommendations, or new classics, that everyone usually suggests, are not infrequently a second wall to overcome. García Márquez, Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, Borges, and many more, to mention only classic Latin American authors, are not exactly easy reads in all cases either, and the same goes for the new classics in English or any other language.

It is understandable, and to be welcomed then, the great success in recent years of literature for young people, usually called young adult literature, which has even made the leap to the big screen, Harry Potter being the best example. The first years of reading, if one manages to overcome these obstacles that, ironically, the school itself puts in our way, are usually a bit wobbly, like the walk of a child who can barely stand up.

When we are lucky enough to come across a book, or author, that we like, after reading it we don't know what to continue with, and it is not surprising that we have reading blocks and lose interest by not finding texts that we like.

If we survive this stage, we begin little by little to define our tastes, and have less difficulty finding readings that we like; It is at this stage that reading can finally become part of our daily lives, and have a truly substantive impact on our lives.

It is at this stage that we go from "I don't want this book to end" to "I already want to finish this book", and not because we don't like it, but because we have many others that we want to read. I am at that stage. One in which your tastes expand more and more, and the books you want to read increase day by day, and are more and more diverse. It generates in us an appetite and avidity to read everything, and to know all the flavors that literature has to offer.

A certain reading promiscuity is generated in us, because we are encouraged to read almost anything, as long as it offers us something new and/or different. And we jump from author to author, from book to book, with extreme ease, which is not necessarily bad, but from the outside it can surprise.

These are some of the many questions that those of us who are in this stage that I like to call promiscuous reading usually hear. A stage in which we always want more, and we get frustrated not having enough time to read everything we want. A few days ago I saw a video of a booktuber who read 20 books in a month, for the second month in a row!, and I couldn't help but wonder, is that wrong?

I don't know if one day I'll read 20 books in a month, nor do I know if I'd be interested in doing so, but I confess that I continually think that I wish I could read more than I do.

Whether this is healthy or not, I don't know, but I think that reading a lot, as long as it doesn't affect your daily life, as long as it doesn't become an addiction, shouldn't be seen as something negative. And if you're unemployed, or on vacation, and without realizing it you read 20 books in a month, well that's great.

I am content with reading one a week, as long as it is not a wall of more than 1,000 pages. And despite my avidity, my reading promiscuity, I try to fully enjoy each book I read before moving on to the next, as it should be, don't you think?

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