Elvira Lindo and Rilke: what people are reading this summer

From Elvira Lindo to Rilke: what people are reading this summer

What do you read when the phone goes off and there's time to spare? The most common answer these days isn't a classic or a current-affairs essay: it's Elvira Lindo's "Yo y el cenutrio", a book from secondary school that a reader picked up again on holiday and finished with flying colors. "It's not a great classic, but it entertained me and made me laugh a bit," they sum up. Their score: an 8 as a summer read and a 6 as a regular novel.

The rest of the reading landscape taking shape these days mixes Central European poetry, history, economic essays and plenty of fragmentary reading. Rilke's Duino Elegies come across as the most demanding pick; Robert E. Howard as the most popular; and hefty economics tomes and Wikipedia biographies as the standby of those who read between notifications.

Elvira Lindo and the book that comes from the classroom

The choice of Lindo is no accident. It's children's and young adult literature that survived its time in the classroom and is now coming back through the back door, the one used by adult readers who pick it up with no homework attached. The verdict is honest: high on entertainment, middling on literary ambition. A diagnosis that applies to much of summer cultural consumption, where the criterion isn't excellence but the ability to hook you effortlessly.

Against that, the list of those flaunting heavyweight reading: Rilke, Howard, economic essays. The distance between a school book and the Duino Elegies measures the gap between what people read and what they claim to read.

Reading with chronic pain: when concentration breaks down

The hardest testimony in the exchange has nothing to do with titles. A reader explains that they've lost the ability to concentrate due to a congenital neck problem that has worsened: "tinnitus, lack of focus, pain and constant fatigue." Their reading today is short texts, stock-market threads and series watched in chunks. "Under normal circumstances it would have been a serious risk," they admit about the habit of reading.

It's not an isolated case or a summer anecdote. Chronic neck pain and its cognitive effects are one of the silent causes of people giving up on long-form reading, and it rarely shows up in surveys of cultural habits. The conversation drifted there without anyone intending it: from what we read to why we stop being able to read.

History, car bombs and the chance of reunions

In between, the record widens. A book on the history of car bombs, another reader who has set out to read everything by Robert E. Howard, and an unexpected hello to someone who hadn't shown up in a while: "Well, hello, the forum." Reading, in the end, is also an excuse to return to the places where you used to read.

The conclusion, if there is one, is that nobody reads what they say they read. You read what your body and your time allow.

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In the end, Lindo's book takes the 8 and Rilke goes unscored. As almost always: the one who makes you laugh wins.