A train wagon. A woman reads Waiting for the Deluge (Destiny/Columna), the latest novel by Dolores Redondo. A couple of seats away, a girl is engrossed in the pages of The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende. At the end of the apartment, another passionate lady is seen with The Life That Separates Us (Grijalbo/Rosa dels Vents), the new Chufo Llorens. Next to her, some gentlemen talk about Barça’s latest victory and that Leo Messi is leaving for Miami. Do women read more than men?
Care Santos has just published El loco de los pájaros (Destiny/Columna) where he immerses himself in the story of New Yorker Eugene Schieffelin, a real character who in the mid-nineteenth century set out to introduce all the species of birds mentioned in the work to the United States from Shakespeare. To document himself, Santos carried out arduous research at the New York Public Library and later enrolled in a genealogy club in the city, which “was very select and very expensive, although it was well worth it.”
The writer tells the details of her documentation and writing process and also the promotion of her works on Tuesday afternoon at El local , the reading club headed by MarÃa Güell . The artist Claudia Vives-Fierro, the lawyers Mónica Ollé and Mele Ciria and the painter Bea Urruela, among many other women, attended. There is only one man in the group and the question is forced: do women read more than men?
“In these types of meetings it is usually like that. There are many women and only one man, sometimes two or three, but that’s because men feel less comfortable in this kind of encounter, which for us is almost like therapy. The truth is that men and women read more or less equally,” says Santos, who knows these issues because she already has more than fifty novels for young people and adults behind her, a couple of volumes of poetry, twenty awards and a lot of literary fairs.
Santos’s response is convincing, but that image of the train hasn’t quite faded. Wednesday evening. Bluesman, the cocktail bar at the Palace hotel in Barcelona. Jesús Terrés, director of GuÃa Hedonista, presents Buscando la belleza, his first novel. It is a story that takes place between two events, the death of the father and the abortion of a son, 20 years apart, a time in which the protagonist “lives a descent into hell from which he emerges stronger, because there can be no happiness.” without sadnessâ€.
Terrés cultivates autofiction and hedonism literature to convey that “light always sneaks into life” and that this usually happens “thanks to the little things of everyday life”. She explains it before a dedicated audience made up of around fifty women and four men. The question is forced: do women read more than men? Terres does not doubt it. “Yes,” he answers emphatically. “80% or 90% of the readers are women, the percentage of men may be higher in crime novels, but in emotional novels, like mine or my admirers Annie Ernaux or Milena Busquets, reading has an accent female”.
Contradictory answers. We must continue investigating. Thursday night. Giardinetto restaurant in Barcelona. Dinner with Pilar Eyre and MarÃa Ãngeles Santiveri, two great readers. Eyre has launched a youtube channel that is going from strength to strength and registering visits in abundance, but that has not stopped him from writing another novel, which is now ready to go to print. It is called De amor y de guerra, will be published by Planeta and will go on sale in September. “It tells the story, which takes place between 1939 and 1948, of a couple who fall in love, but are forced to separate. He goes abroad and she stays in Spain and up to here I can read, â€she says. Eyre, who has many fans, and Santiveri can break the tie, so the question is forced: do women read more than men?
“I had a boyfriend who read as much or more than me. The separation was very heavy, not so much because of the emotional part but because tons of books had to be carried in the moveâ€, Eyre is sincere. “I met a man who was a truly enviable reader, he read non-stop, but he has already passed awayâ€, adds Santiveri. There doesn’t seem to be a conclusive answer. The question remains in the air: do women read more than men?
