Knowledge does not take place, they say. Anyone who has made a move knows that there is no greater fallacy. Boxes of books are, along with Ikea furniture, the contraptions most likely to trigger individual despair, or the throwing of plates as a couple. Being honestthe Playstation, the computer, the mobile phone or the e-book, work out better. Who wants to walk around the drama carrying pages like a mule, being able to do like the Americans in the movies, putting their work life in a little cardboard box?
The books seemed destined to do the green mile march with the digital boom. Leisure options have multiplied so much… It seemed unlikely that something like dry ink, so atavistic, so ancient, would be survive the audiovisual amusement park. To that candy store to stay like a nit; hanging like a ham, during days of endless tinkling light.
But the books, like Pedro Sánchez, are involved in the resistance. When we think we see them crawling on the ground, subjected to the diabolical force of technology, they rise up; triumphant, rude, and they recover the center of the ring. Against all logic, they are updated. Almost by spell. As if his power broke through the increasing shovelfuls of earth that were poured over the analog.
Going to the origin of bibliophile regeneration in the century of digital awakening, it is surprising to know that the first e-book threat has a Castilian designation of origin. Leonesa, specifically. The teacher, Ángela Ruiz Robles, patented a “mechanical encyclopedia” in 1949. Something like a briefcase, more gadget than gadget -due to lack of financing-, to allow reduce the burden of textbooks in their students’ backpacks. Unfortunately for the country, the prototype did not go any further. Although Robles was offered, in the seventies, from the other side of the Atlantic, to buy the patent for his idea. Offer that he rejected, because he wanted the “mechanical encyclopedia” was developed in Galiciawhere he worked for much of his career.
Because, despite Robles’s refusal, it was there, in the Americas, where In 1971, Michael Hart laid the first stones of the Project Gutenberg, next step in the line of making the book a digital application. Although, more than the book, what is aluminó was an archetype of web library (still available, and with about 60 thousand digitized works). In order not to talk so much about it, let’s jump directly to 2007. At the birth of the Amazon Kindle. The absolute reference in the cultural imagination when talking about ebook.
These evolutionary cells of the reading machine are built around the object. That is to say, the book, as a material billet, as a brick tree sprinkled with black mordant, finds a substitute in the digital universe. A substitute, you could say; comfortable, practical and cheap -At the end of the day, even if the joke is expensive in the first instance, it ends up compensating given the price of the works. However, rubbing the leather, smelling the dust, mistreating the page or pamper her like a puppy, continues to prevail against the manifest fragility of the tactile almanac. To the point that Amazon, a pioneer in the e-book, confesses to selling three times more physical books than digital ones. It will be because of the space… it will be because of the accessibility… it will be because we like to slide up to the volumes, undress them, caress them, take them by the arm during visits to our library, as if we were showing off an attractive couple. Be that as it may, there they are. They resist heavy and with the power of plunge into the heights of despair if we have to undergo a transfer.
So much so, that in the last ten years the reading rate in Spain has increased by 5.7%. And, it should be noted, that Young people are the ones who have become hooked on the digestion of words most prominently since 2020. The pandemic, well, with its countless dramas, also brought some good news. But can only confinement justify this reading outbreak? It does not seem – not at all – that a return to literature in such a jungle of digital leisure was born, solely, from an impasse of immobility and confinement. There are, without a doubt, other triggers…
Needless to say, one of the most significant characteristics of today’s youth, compared to their parents’ generation, It’s trap… and social networks. Both can be criminalized. There are plenty of reasons. But even in the dry lands beautiful and powerful thistles sprout, with hypnotic purple flowers. One of them, in the infinite steppe of networks, They are booktubers, booktokers, instabookers, etc. The semantics are simple, any social network to which the word “book” in English is added, very neatly.
Only in the Spanish-speaking world, they number in the hundreds, I would even say thousands. The double edge of the networks is that any neighbor’s child, whether or not he has much idea of what he is saying, can record himself and post his opinion. But, as a rule, while not let’s talk about reactionaries that seek to drip accelerant in the discomforts today’s flammable materials, the good cut usually stands out. The juicy one. One who, If he doesn’t have much to say, at least he does it with grace and a certain magnetism.
In this world, names like those of Raiza Revelles (@soyraizarevelles), with 1.97 million subscribers on YouTube, Rachel Brune (@raquelbrune), with 528 thousand subscribers on YouTube, Paola Boutellier (@paolaboutellier), with 45.4 thousand followers on Instagram, Javier Ruescas (@javierruescas), with 110 thousand followers on Instagram or Maryam Assakat (@maryam.and.books), with 1.9 million followers on Tik Tok.
And this whole string of names is characterized a bit by the same thing. Namely; an agile, sincere and personal exhibition, which for those same reasons tends to remain visceral. In general, these disseminators focus especially on expressing their opinion, without being able to go into the details of the books with a depth that the format – especially on Tik Tok and Instagram – does not facilitate. A lucrative paradox, since one of the keys to its success, of course, is its permeability to the hyperactive nature of consumers. These influencers adapt with flamenco ease to accelerated, blunt and finished expression that demand the ever-shrinking limits of attention to digital natives.
Nor can we say that there is a flat hierarchy. The titles that most populate the channels of these creators of contents correspond to youth, fantasy or science fiction novels. Reading volumes-chamomile. Easy to digest, for the most part, and, therefore, to approach. However, for those who feel tempted to undervalue, as a whole, the work of these young peopleI should flatten the mui. Well, although their most viewed videos, indeed, correspond to that -perhaps wrongly called- “minor” literature, these creators are inveterate readers, whose hands do not tremble if they have to face hundreds of readings per year. And, of course, of all of them, works that break with the aforementioned canon appear like moles.
Because, that’s right, if someone suddenly sees his little cousin, about 18 years old, holding the Ulises by Joyce, Letter to a young poetby Rilke, or something by Kafka, know that if it is not because you have dangerous friendships, or come from a family environment with parchment air freshener, it is most likely that you have came across the recommendation of one of these accounts. Thus we have cases such as that of the YouTube channel: Essentia Libris (@EssentiaLibris), which with barely a year of existence, accumulates the not inconsiderable number of more than 10 thousand followers, addressing volumes such as those mentioned above, and even philosophical classics, from a critic endowed with accurately analytical intellectual honesty.
It is also difficult to overlook that the bulk of these disseminators are women. Young women, in fact. This confirms, once again, the preponderance of reading among the female gender., compared to men (10% more according to the INE). Networks, in this type of comparisons, are usually an effective thermometer.
Continuing with the particularities of the book (something), A careful aesthetic is another of its attractions. Speaking, as we do, of an audiovisual cosmos, the videos are sprinkled with music, good lighting and even striking animations. When it comes to criticizing, one could speak of frivolity. But what is a fancy cover if not? Attention is a good to be exploited, no matter what we talk about. Oh, and ready to explode, it is also necessary to highlight that there is a great intersectionality in the communication channels of these neo-critics. It is rare that they only frequent a single network, as they tend to expand through several at the same time. Those who have studied economics know it well, Diversification paves the roads to success. Above all, in the digital environment.
It resonates in the background, when talking about booktuber, booktok…, in short, about these influencers, the chattering of teeth over the burial of the profession of the traditional critic, in traditional media, which seem to prophesy these exorbitant figures. It is hard to believe that, in Spain alone, and with more than forty books, Harold Bloom has achieved almost two million readers who collect some of the names mentioned above. In the world, go, the label #Booktok adds 131 billion views…Harold would have liked to take such a dip in the masses. However, the industry suggests that there is room for everyone. For thoughtful, perhaps humorous, well-written criticism, focused on the pen, who must raise what they eat for something, and for the entertaining, perhaps childish, well-communicated criticism, focused on the audiovisual, which for something is what feeds it.
In any case, the essential thing, to summarize, would be to rejoice in the fact that, against all odds, in an orchard so chaotic and overflowing with aggressive, constant and addictive stimuli, literature proves resilient. Maybe there is someone smells like dystopia when you walk into a bookstore and see a big, shiny sign indicating books recommended by booktokersor when you find out that among the best-selling non-fiction volumes, on book day, is one of Jordi Wild.
Be that as it may, the habit, the interest in reading can germinate in the most unexpected quagmires. Wherever it comes from, welcome. A spark of curiosity can ignite the fire of passion. A hungry outburst, to which it is worth surrendering, if what we are talking about is the promiscuous and proteinaceous pleasure of reading.
