Books are meant to be stained

When I was young, I remember I really enjoyed reading. I’d like to think it was solely for pleasure, but the truth is, back then there weren’t as many screens to look at, and the only way to overcome boredom was to read everything I could find around the house. From dinosaur encyclopedias to shampoo labels.

I have a special fondness for a book series written by Pierdomenico Bacalario called Ulysses Moore. I always suspected that the author’s name was a pseudonym, but the internet tells me I’m wrong. The books themselves were about the adventures of three English kids who had moved to an old house by a cliff. The town, Kilmore Cove, was supposed to be full of hidden doors that, once opened with the right key, could lead the one who crossed them to very specific moments in space-time. Each of the books is about different journeys: from 18th-century Venice to ancient Egypt. I remember devouring those books and going to my neighborhood bookstore after finishing classes to find the next book in the series.

But all that’s in the past now. The reading appetite of those days has been replaced by the multitude of immediate entertainment alternatives I have in the palm of my hand. I firmly believe those childhood sensations won’t come back, and that’s why I’ve decided to take an alternative strategy. Perhaps I no longer find pleasure in reading for the sake of it, but I still enjoy reading to learn. When one starts to see reading as a source of knowledge and not just as a pastime, everything changes. The fear of underlining, bending, or dirtying it, that is, interacting with the book, disappears completely. The goal of a book was never to finish it but to travel to a new world just like with the doors of Kilmore Cove. It is true that the traveler runs the risk of getting lost and not finding the door back to their original world. But does one really want to return?