Outdoor bookstores

In this city I live (thanks God) books are everywhere. In bookstores, kiosks, in second hand bookstores, in the streets, everywhere. I cannot understand how come people don’t read in a city fool of books.

To me, books in the streets seems like “orphan children” looking for adoption. I can understand with only one glance, who buys a book to read it or no. Well, when I see someone to buy a book and I know that he will not open it, I want to tell him: “ok, you bought it, you pay to the salesman his dinner, but please, at least try to read two pages. In the bus, in the bathroom, in your bed…”

But I don’t do it. It is not my business. But, often, when someone buys a book that I have read, I approach him and tell him my opinion.

Sometimes is… useful for the future of the book, sometimes no.

But, imagine how much people in this world need books and they cannot afford for it. They want to learn to read, or read, but the conditions around them don’t permit it. This happens in the half world today.

Personally, I love second hand books.

First of all they are cheap and you can buy more with the same money. For me, the important thing is the content and not the luxury “package”.

And this is not only the cheap price.

Used books have their own life. They have their own secrets. Used books are full of emotions. Their faded pages testify that many people have shared this “secret”. The underlines made of paper or pen and the marks in the margins reveal the kind of the reader. What was important for him? “Oh this phrase is very beautiful, he might be sensitive”. “O come on, he loves clichés!” and the story goes…

It’s like spying other people lifes and finally u realize that everyone “conceives” differently the meaning of the same book.

I wish would come here this movement of “exchanging” books. You pass from a point, you leave your read book and you take another one that someone else has left there.

But as Mr. Winter says “here people don’t read”.

But some things in this life, are not for everyone. For this minority that keep reading it is a kind of blessing to find books all around you.

Isn’t it GOOD LUCK?