I think my story started as a normal
kid with a normal childhood, like most of the kids. I was worried about going
to the park to play soccer with my neighbours, I wanted to eat a lot of candy,
and books were some weird objects that gown up people used to pass their time.
My parents tried to induce me into the literary world in my early years, but my
priorities at the time did not allowed reading. As I said before, I was not an
odd kid that start a lecture habit since his early years. However, during my
high school years, my relationship with books began with some pretty good
lectures. Most of my teachers sent us these littles, yet awesome titles: “Los
Bonsais Gigantes”, “El negocio de Papá” come to my mind, I really enjoyed those
books. We also read some famous authors like Grabiel García Marquez, José
Ortega y Gasset, Jules Verne, Ernest Hemingway, Javier Marias, Juan Rulfo,
Rafael Chaparro, and the list can go on and on. Without noticing I became a reader,
every month we had an incredible book dig into, and I was always anxious about
the next one that was going to fall in my hands. It might seem that my lecture
habit began in this years, but I did not read if it was not for homework. So
naturally, when I was in vacations, I did not touch any books.
The story of how I started to read has three
main parts; my teenage years, my search for what to do with my life after high
school, and my years living in France.
While
all of these authors passed through my hands, the one that actually left me a
seed of curiosity, a sensation that I was missing something important, that he
had something else for me was Ernesto Sabato. I was in my third year of high
school, and my literature teacher send us this tiny book, one hundred and
twenty pages, called El Tunel. When I bought it, the first thing that came to
my mind was: This is going to be really easy. It took me an afternoon the day
before the lecture control to go through the whole book. But at the end of it,
I felt something weird inside me. Until that day, no other writer was able to
move my soul; when reading that book, sometimes it felt like he was talking
about me and my thoughts. Until that moment, I was sure nobody would ever be
able to understand me, ever.
Pre-France
Still, my reader
awaking was going to take a little longer. After high school, my head was
having trouble deciding what should I do with my life as a professional. I
always had this love for mathematics, and a lot of people made me think I was
not cut for anything that has to do with words, or art. Obviously, these opinions,
plus the pressure from my parents, made me take the decision of leaving
everything and go to France to study aeronautics. I think it is obvious that,
at the time, I have no idea how to speak, or write in French, as a result, I
started studding the French at the Aliance Française in Quito. As usual, this
feeling of not being understood by anybody was present all the time, but during
a conversation about books, a classmate mentioned Sabato, and his trilogy: El
Tunel, Sobre Héroes y Tumbas and Abbadon el Exterminador. This was a shock for
me because the last time I heard from Sabato was in highschool, and the news
about a trilogy that included El Tunel awoke a quench of curiosity about these
two other unknown books. But fate had something else down the road for me; even thought I spend my last year looking for the second book, I could not find it anywhere.
France
Leading us to the third
part, after my conversation about this trilogy, and these two unknown books, I
spent the rest of my time in my home country searching for them. I knew that
Abbadon el Exterminador was in my house, but Sobre Héroes y Tumbas became my
chimera. About a year and a half passed since the day I became aware of their
existence, I was already in France, and since the only relatives I had near
lived in Paris, I went there to spend the two week of holidays during
Christmas. My uncles have a pretty large collection of books from all sorts of
genres. My uncle is a geologist and my aunt is in charge of the research budget
of the IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris), they both work there. As
you can Imagine there are a lot of scientific books, but also tons of novels.
My aunt told me if I see any book I was interested in, she would let me read
it, with the condition that I will return it after. So, I started to see if
there where something that could call my attention. I can recall seeing some Russian
books, Azimov, Geology, García Máquez, books for kids, I spend about 10 minutes
when all of the sudden my sight just saw this brown book that stood out from
the rest. I could not believe it, there it was: Sobre Héroes y Tumbas.
Obviously, I told her that I would
take that book and as soon as I was in the train going back home, I started
reading it. This was my beginning as an active reader, this specific book is my
favorite until now. It is a really dense lecture, but it was a life changing
experience; I fell in love with books since that day.
France was the perfect place for me
to discover the reader inside me. The fact that I was alone, and I love to be
alone, left me a lot of time to read. So, I continued acquiring books and
devouring them. I spend 3 years reading almost every day, books became the
perfect roommates for me. Nowadays I don’t have that much time to read the
things I want to, but I consider myself lucky, I still have awesome teachers
that send me other awesome readings.
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