Hell, I can burn through a Harry Potter epic in one day. Most weeks I read at LEAST a book a day.

I work in my clients’ homes, and I was deeply disturbed the first few times I worked in a house that HAD NO BOOKS. I mean, my parents don’t read voraciously like I do, but they still have shelves and shelves of books around. I still find it hard to imagine what on earth people could be doing with their lives that precludes owning even a cookbook or reference work.

There’s a reading incentive program going on now where they post the first pages of books inside metro wagons, theoretically to peak people’s interest and get them to read the whole thing. Except for one poem by Lorca, I haven’t yet read a single one of these posters that I like (and being a compulsive reader I have to read every single one of them, every single time I’m in the Metro. Torture really).

The problem with these “books” is:

1. No f– plot discernable in the first page
2. Starting with childhood memories, which judging by the historical references all belong to a 50+ person, mostly male.
3. About half are classical children stories. Why someone should get credit and free publicity for retyping classic nursery rhymes is beyond me.
4. Atrocious writing. 200+ word phrases and such. In Spanish, you can get away with a 100-130 word phrase, but 200 is pushing it, even for a language based on subordinate clauses.
5. The poetry is… imagine a bunch of fifteen-year-olds told to write poetry in a classroom without teachers full of nice runny red paint. Or alternatively, imagine a social gathering of some seven sixty-year old women married to civil servants, sipping coffe and gossiping when suddenly, one of them says: say, I’ve decided to become a poet.
6. They’re making me read this, dammit! I have rights!

The average spending in books in Spain is 66,7 euros, which, given the price of the average hard-back (the book everyone gives in Christmas when they can’t think of anything else), means that Spaniards are buying about 2-3 books a year and reading less (since that novel given/received in Christmas is usually the winner of the Premio Planeta and of irregular quality). I also suspect those 66.7 euros include textbooks.

Spanish libraries boast less than one book per person, but it doesn’t matter, since only 0,77 books per person are borrowed each year. http://exlibris.usal.es/bibesp/nopago/dossier.pdf

The overemphasis on the classics in school is partly to blame. The Quixote, the only outstanding book a Spaniard ever wrote, gets shoved down every one’s throats and by the time a kid is old enough to understand it, they’re so sick of reading the first page that they’ll never pick it up. I suspect people are going to start citing great books by Spanish writers: before you do, double check that the writer isn’t South American. Nothing I’ve said applies to South America and most of the great literature in Spanish was written after 1492, if you know what I mean.

As a further measure to pre-empt endless citations: Lorca. There, it’s said.