Students were asked to write a short composition about the reasons why they do or do not like to read. Here are some of the responses.

“I like to read because books never die.”

“I like reading because it makes me special.”

“Reading is a talent that really helps you in life.”

“Reading makes me feel like I’m a part of history that is bigger than any single life.”

“I don’t like reading. I prefer mathematics to literature because I like stability and predictability. Change scares me.”

“I have to confess that when I was assigned novels in my English literature class, I didn’t read them. I just read notes online. I want to read something that will take me to a different world. This is why I’m now taking Spanish literature.”

“I love to read because I watch a lot of TV and that’s really hard on my eyes. So reading helps me rest me eyes from all the images on a screen.”

“Reading is great because I don’t have to talk to people who annoy me when I read. I can just say, “Can’t you see I’m reading?” and they leave me in peace.”

“I love reading but only real paper books, not the digital kind. Real books have this comforting smell that I love.”

“Books make me feel like Harry Potter: they let me open a portal to a new world.”

“I like reading because it’s cheaper than going to the movies.”

All of Europe has now been reduced to Germany. Even books bought from a Spanish store arrive by German mail.

Is there anything left of Europe that exists for a reason other than enriching Germans?

Dating couples in their teens and twenties tend to end their restaurant meals with a half an hour of blissful, silent staring at their smartphones. I’m from a different generation, and 30 minutes of silence at the end of a date still seem weird to me.

At the lunch place in our neighborhood, we order a half portion and then split it between the two of us. And take the abundant leftovers home.

Of course, we only end up at that place because the other neighborhood lunch café, the one which serves small, expensive, very chic meals, is always overflowing with customers.

We have many doctors’ offices in this area, and doctors prefer expensive and healthy lunch options.

When I got my BA (with all kinds of prizes, awards and accolades), my parents presented me with a gift of my very first trip to Spain and Portugal. It was kind of weird to be planning a PhD in Peninsular literature without ever having visited the country, so the gift was very timely.

This was a bus trip where I was the only Canadian among a big group of Brits and a few Americans. We were led by our tour guide Francisco, a man who was gay in every sense of the word, and our driver Jesús. Jesús was in his fifties, didn’t speak a word of English, and was very happy to have at least a single Spanish-speaker on the bus whom he could regale with stories of his childhood under Franco and long quotes from his favorite book Lazarillo de Tormes.

After a few days of traveling, I noticed that Jesús kept getting stopped by traffic police. This was weird because he had told me that he’d been working as a tour bus driver for almost 25 years.

“So how come you keep breaking the rules?” I asked Jesús after we arrived in Seville. “I thought you were supposed to be hugely experienced at driving.”

“Oh, I do it on purpose,” he explained. “I want to get stopped every couple of hours. If I were driving a Spanish or a Latin American group, I wouldn’t need to. But with these crazy Anglos. . .”

And now the riddle: Why did Jesús make efforts to get stopped by traffic police when he drove this particular group?