books

Science has calculated the real impact of reading books on your brain. And it has a very simple recipe: 30 minutes a day

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It is well known that a sedentary lifestyle It is one of the great enemies of public healthespecially at advanced ages where muscle loss is a great danger. However, there are sedentary activities that are really beneficial and that we sometimes stop, such as reading books. Its benefit is such that science has shown that immersing yourself in the pages of a good book It not only feeds the intellect, but also lengthens life. The demonstration. One of the most important studies who wanted to focus on the benefits of reading, beyond the cognitive benefits or the richness of vocabulary for everyday life, analyzed a group of 3,635 nationally representative participants in the United States over 12 years. And as a result, they saw that the longer the time spent reading books, lower risk of mortality. The results. To understand the magnitude of the discovery, the researchers followed all the patients until 20% of them died and only 80% remained. There they put the cut and began to draw conclusions. The first is that non-readers reached this point at 85 months, while book readers reached this same threshold at 108 months. This is something that translates into a 23-month survival advantage for those who had the habit of reading books, or in other words, readers reduced the risk of mortality by 20% throughout the 12 years of follow-up. Furthermore, this protection was maintained regardless of a person’s gender, wealth, education, or health status. The format matters. Although you may think that any type of reading is appropriate, even the back of a shampoo, the reality is quite different. In this case, the study explicitly compared the impact of reading books versus reading the newspaper or a magazine. The findings here demonstrated that reading books contributes to a significantly greater survival advantage than that seen with newspapers or magazines. While magazines offer short articles that we often skim, books require a higher level of concentration. Something that is enhanced above all because the authors constantly present themes, characters and topics and that is essential to be able to follow the thread of the story that is being presented to us. Because? Here science is quite clear that the key is in the brain, since the “cognitive score” functioned as a complete mediator of this survival advantage. This means that reading books improves cognition and it is this cognitive improvement that prolongs life. Here reading books activates different specific neural processes that create this advantage. Among the most notable points, we find that active reading of books improves skills such as reasoning, concentration, critical thinking and vocabulary. But it also promotes social perception, empathy and emotional intelligence, which can lead to better health behaviors and stress reduction. Fundamental things when we talk about extending life. It’s backed up. In addition to the original study published in 2016, science has wanted to continue investigating the benefits of reading with a study published in 2024 where the complexity of reading in older adults pointed to less cognitive decline. But it has also been decided to analyze even the cultural level of the citizens, where it has been seen that low literacy increases mortalityonce again making the act of reading books stimulate our brain and protect our cognitive reserve. Although it is not necessary to be reading all day to guarantee having a better brain, studies specifically point out that with about 30 minutes a day It is enough to start reaping these advantages and obtain more years of life in which to continue reading. Images | Blaz Photo In Xataka | The problem is not that we are reading fewer books: it is that the books we read are much simpler and easier

Anthropic wanted to secretly scan and then destroy millions of books to train its AI. It hasn’t been so secret

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A language model for AI needs input if it is to be trained to be more accurate and effective. The issue is how the information is obtained and whether there is an ethical way to do it that is profitable for the technology company in power. There is no doubt that the preferred option for companies has been to use all possible physical and digital content without anyone’s permission. There is also evidence. A judicial leak reveals that Anthropic invested tens of millions of dollars in acquiring and digitizing literary works without permission from the authors. According to account Washington Post, the project, internally called “Panama”, was part of a frenetic race among big technology companies to accumulate massive data to train their artificial intelligence models. How it all started. The Panama Project was launched by Anthropic in early 2024. According to internal documents revealed per the Washington Post, the goal was to “destructively scan every book in the world.” Furthermore, these documents also explicitly state that the company did not want anyone to know that they were working on it. In about a year, the company spent tens of millions of dollars buying millions of books, cutting their spines with hydraulic machines and scanning their pages to feed the AI ​​models that power Claudeits star chatbot. According to the media, the books, once digitized, ended up being recycled. Because has come to light. The details of the project have been revealed in a lawsuit for infringement of rights copyright filed by literary authors against Anthropic. Although the company agreed to pay $1.5 billion to close the case in August 2025, a district judge decided to make more than 4,000 pages of internal documents public last week, exposing the entire operation. They are not the only ones. Court documents reveal that other technology companies such as Meta, Google and OpenAI had also participated in this race to obtain massive information to train their models. According to revealed According to the documents, an Anthropic co-founder theorized in January 2023 that training AI models with books could teach them “how to write well” instead of imitating “low-quality internet slang.” On the other hand, an internal Meta email from 2024 described access to a digital library of books as “essential” to be competitive with rivals in the race to dominate AI. However, the documents revealed by the media also show how Meta employees expressed concern on several occasions about the legality of downloading millions of books without permission. An internal email from December 2023 indicates that the practice had been approved after being “escalated to MZ,” apparently referring to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. According to court records to which the media has had access, the companies did not consider it “practical” to obtain direct permission from publishers and authors. Instead, they found ways to mass-acquire books without the writers’ knowledge, including downloading unauthorized copies from third-party sites. Chat logs from April 2024 show an employee asking why they were using servers rented from Amazon to download torrents instead of Facebook’s own. The answer: “Avoid the risk of tracing” the activity back to the company. Data torrent. The documents to which the Washington Post has had access also they test that Ben Mann, co-founder of Anthropic, personally downloaded over 11 days in June 2021 a collection of books from LibGen, a gigantic library of copyrighted content. The outlet further revealed that, a year later, in July 2022, Mann celebrated the launch of the ‘Pirate Library Mirror’ website, which boasts a massive database of books and openly claims to violate copyright laws. “Just in time!!!” Mann wrote to other Anthropic employees, according to the outlet. Anthropic stated in legal documents that it never trained a revenue-generating business model using LibGen data nor did it use Pirate Library Mirror to train any full model. Anthropic’s legal solution. According to point the medium in its article, faced with the legal risk, Anthropic changed its strategy. The company hired Tom Turvey, a Silicon Valley veteran who had helped create the project Google Books two decades earlier. Under his direction, Anthropic considered purchasing books from libraries or secondhand bookstores, including New York’s iconic Strand bookstore. The company ultimately ended up buying millions of books and stacking them in a giant warehouse, often in batches of tens of thousands, according to court filings. The Washington Post assures In addition, the company worked with used book sellers in the United Kingdom. A project proposal mentions that Anthropic sought to “convert between 500,000 and two million books in a six-month period.” What the law says. Most legal cases against AI companies are still ongoing, but the media mention two court rulings that have considered that the use of books to train AI models without permission from the author or publisher may be legal under the “fair use” doctrine of copyright. In June 2025, District Judge William Alsup determined that Anthropic had the right to use books to train AI models because they process them in a “transformative” way. He compared the process to teachers “teaching schoolchildren to write well.” That same month, Judge Vince Chhabria ruled in the Meta case that the authors had not shown that the company’s AI models could harm the sales of their books. In the Anthropic case, the physical book scanning project was considered legal, but the judge determined that the company may have infringed copyright by downloading millions of books without authorization before launching Project Panama. The final agreement. Instead of facing a trial, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to publishers and authors without admitting guilt. According to point According to the media, authors whose books were downloaded can claim their share of the settlement, estimated at about $3,000 per title. Cover image | Emil Widlund and Anthropic In Xataka | If AI is going to leave us without jobs, in the United Kingdom they are already seriously discussing the solution: a universal basic income

Adobe presents itself as a champion of creators in the age of AI. Lawsuit alleges he used copyrighted books

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Adobe has built part of its artificial intelligence strategy on a very recognizable banner: protecting creators in a time of profound change. While other technology companies accumulated criticism for the origin of their data, the company presented itself as a responsible alternative. That position is now facing a lawsuit which focuses on the training of one of its models and the use of copyrighted works. The case is not an anomaly, but rather a reflection of a question that the industry has not yet been able to clearly answer. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. Court for the Northern District of California and takes the form of a proposed class action. An author named Elizabeth Lyon accuses Adobe of using copyrighted books, including her own, to train the company’s AI models, with SlimLM at the center of the case, without permission. According to judicial documentation, these works would have been part of the training process of systems designed to respond to human instructions. Lyon claims to be acting on behalf of other rights holders who would find themselves in a similar situation. The great debate about data that trains AI To understand why this type of litigation is repeated with increasing frequency, it is worth taking a moment to look at how current artificial intelligence works. Beyond the visible applications, from chatbots to image generators, there are underlying models that act as the core of the system and learn from huge volumes of data. Generally speaking, more data can improve performance, although it is not the only factor. The problem appears when the key question arises about the origin of that information and the conditions under which it has been used. The model indicated in the lawsuit is not Firefly, Adobe’s best-known creative system, but SlimLMa family of smaller language models designed for specific tasks. These models are designed to assist users with document-related functions, especially on mobile devices. It is not an AI aimed at large-scale creative generation, but rather a system that operates in the background. That difference is relevant because it shows that the debate over training data is not limited to the most visible applications. According to the lawsuit, the conflict would not be in SlimLM as a final product, but in the data used during its training phase. Adobe has explained that these models were pre-trained with SlimPajama-627Ba open source data set published by Cerebras in June 2023. The court brief maintains that SlimPajama derives from RedPajama, another dataset widely used in the industry, and which in turn incorporates Books3, a massive collection of copyrighted books. That chain is the one that, according to the plaintiff, would have allowed the inclusion of works without authorization. Until now, Adobe’s public narrative on artificial intelligence has been primarily articulated around Fireflya product clearly identified with respect for creators and the use of licensed content. The company has defended that these models were trained with licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain material, and has accompanied that message with compensation programs for Adobe Stock contributors. The demand, however, is not directed at that visible front, but, as we say, at SlimLM, a more discreet model, integrated into assistance tasks and without a direct commercial presence. This separation is key to understanding the real scope of the case. The proceedings against Adobe are framed in a broader context of litigation in the United States related to the training of AI models. In recent years, authors and other rights holders have taken to court technology companies like OpenAIor Anthropicwith lawsuits alleging the use of protected works without authorization. Some of these processes are still open and others have ended in million-dollar agreements. This scenario explains why each new case is interpreted as another step in the legal delimitation of the use of data in artificial intelligence. For now, the case is in an initial phase and leaves many unknowns open. The plaintiff requests a unspecified financial compensation and raises the action on behalf of other potentially affected parties, while Adobe did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment. It will be the judicial process that determines whether the lawsuit is successful, is filed or results in an agreement. Beyond its specific outcome, the litigation once again puts the focus on an issue that remains unresolved: how to balance the advancement of AI with the rights of those who create the content from which it learns. Images | Rubaitul Azad | Adobe In Xataka | Gemini 3 Flash has surpassed GPT-5.2 Extra High in several benchmarks: Google has just changed the rules of the lightweight model

There are a lot of people going to libraries to look for books that don’t exist: an AI invented them

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Junk content made with AI is sneaking into every corner of the internet: it is ruining the authenticity of Etsythe Wikipediait confuses us search for an apartment in Idealista and of course plague social networks. He ‘slop’ of AI is reaching the real world, specifically libraries. What is happening. They tell it inScientific American. There are people going to libraries and archives in search of books or scientific articles that do not appear anywhere for one reason: they do not exist. International Red Cross has alerted to the situation and blames AI tools such as Gemini, ChatGPT or Copilot. They assure that “These systems do not conduct research, verify sources or collate information. They generate new content based on statistical patterns and, therefore, may produce invented results.” In Xataka He "AI slop" turned into art. A Chinese creator is copying the absurd aesthetics of generative AI, and it’s hilarious Fed up librarians. The research director of the Virginia library estimates that at least 15% of the queries they receive through mail are about documents and works generated by ChatGPT and similar tools. “For our staff, it is much more difficult to prove that there is no single record,” he says. A Bluesky user recounts a similar experience when a student asked him to find a series of references. After searching for a while without success, he asked the student where he got the list from and he confessed that it came from Google’s AI summaries. Made-up dating isn’t something that started happening the day before yesterday,In 2023 there were already discussions about it. Seattle University found that it is often very difficult to verify these invented quotes. The reason is that AI usually gives titles of magazines or books that exist, but what does not exist is the chapter or issue where the information is found. What it does is mix information to make it seem convincing, when in reality it is a dead end. AI and books. Invented references are not the only problem, there are librarians who also They criticize books created entirely with AI for being “incredibly bad” and we have recently learned of the case of South Korea and the resounding failure of its AI school book program. On the other hand we have the copyright problem. As with works of art, books too have been used to train AI without compensating their authors. A group of authors sued Anthropicfor this reason, but The judge ruled in favor of the company. {“videoId”:”x8jpy2b”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”What’s BEHIND AIs like CHATGPT, DALL-E or MIDJOURNEY? | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”1173″} Papers on AI, made with AI. In an article by Futurism They said that a consequence of the AI ​​slop is that the papers that investigate AI themselves are made with AI. It is estimated that the number of papers on AI has doubled in recent years and journals such as NeurIPS have had to ask doctoral students to help them review them. There is a specific case of a researcher named Kevin Zhu who has participated in more than 100 papers in one year, an exorbitant figure for experts. To no one’s surprise, many of these papers are a real disaster full of made up quotes, blatant errors and sometimes hidden text to manipulate the review systems themselves. hallucinations. That AI invents things is quite common, they are the In AI jargon it is known as hallucinations and one of the weak points of language models; The advances are enormous, but the reality is that We still can’t trust AI and it is necessary to verify the information. Hallucinations are often the reason why those who use AI in their jobs are caught, such as the consulting firm Deloitte, which delivered a report to the Australian government that contained references to completely fabricated reports. Image | Cottonbro studio, Pexels In Xataka | The birth of an anti-reading movement: more and more people admit to using AI to summarize books (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news There are a lot of people going to libraries to look for books that don’t exist: an AI invented them was originally published in Xataka by Amparo Babiloni .

More and more people admit to using AI to summarize books

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Marcos, a 21-year-old student, acknowledges that it costs him “a lot” read a book whole because he can’t find “neither the time, nor the way, nor the desire.” That is why he uses AI when he needs to read a text or book for class. “Who hasn’t used it today?” he asks. For her part, Raquel, 24, also relies on artificial intelligence tools when she doesn’t have the time or “inclination” to read. She admits that she has sometimes felt that by using AI she was missing out on a story that she might like, but she doesn’t regret doing it—and she’s sure she will do it again. Neither Raquel nor Marcos believe that using these types of tools is dangerous or worrying, they simply consider it a change like any other in their generation. “It’s not that shocking, generations simply change, we read differently. We are a generation that reads through mobile phones and technological devices,” explains Marcos. The search for shortcuts not to read It is not something new or exclusive to current generations. Students have always found ways to avoid books and get by on assignments or exams: copying summaries already made by publishers, asking a classmate for an explanation, or resorting to platforms such as Vago’s Corner. With the advent of AI, not reading is even easier. A search on social networks is enough to find dozens of publications with recommendations of applications, websites or AI tools that “promise” those who use them not need to open the book. Under titles like “Do you find it difficult to read books due to lack of time? I share 4 IA that read for you (and improve your understanding)!”, tools are released that summarize any text or book, and that are also capable of creating mental maps, presentations, videos or even podcast (in case you don’t even have time to read the summaries). Ok boomer. (Clay Banks/Unsplash) On these same platforms, young people express the relief they feel at not needing to read when they don’t want to. A Tiktok user He suggests in his videos that he is “happier” for not having to “read 765 pages of a PDF”, since he only reads “the summary and the flashcards” that an application creates for him. “Spanish people are reading more and more” AI has become another accessory in our daily lives, a tool that we use for more and more things. We have verified its potential by solving operations or programming, but also by writing and summarizing texts. From there a question arises: if artificial intelligence can write, summarize and even tell us stories, can AI replace reading? For now, in Spain, no. The statistics of reading in our country reflect a growing interest in reading in almost all age groups: the percentage of Spaniards who read in their free time This 2025 has exceeded 65% for the first time, breaking the myth that young people no longer read —75.3% of the population between 14 and 24 years old read in their free time. This good reading health coexists with a new reality: young people incorporate artificial intelligence into their daily lives with astonishing naturalness. According to the report This is how we are. The state of adolescence in Spain, by Plan International By 2025, 62% of girls and 59% of boys between 12 and 21 years old surveyed use AI to resolve questions related to their studies. In fact, 68% of them and 61% of them fear “developing a certain dependence on this technology.” Reading, therefore, does not disappear, but it begins to share space—and time—with a tool that can replace, complement or transform the way young people relate to it. AI’s abilities to write texts are already well known to users. teachers. What, according to Patricia Sánchez, a Language and Literature teacher at an institute in Leganés, is beginning to worry them now is another, less visible effect: how it can affect to development of students to delegate tasks such as reading, understanding or interpreting a text to the AI. “At certain ages there are tasks that we should not leave in the hands of technology,” says the teacher. Don’t ask him where he gets the summary of the book, mind you. (Emiliano Vittoriosi/Unsplash) Teachers like Sánchez warn that using AI to read, summarize or write instead of doing it yourself—especially at an early age—can slow down the development of fundamental skills such as reading comprehension, writing or analytical skills. Sánchez sees it as problematic that “they do not acquire certain skills”, that “they do not make efforts, that they do not make mistakes and therefore are not able to solve them.” Organizations like the UNESCO or the World Economic Forum They point out how delegating activities – such as reading – to technology can affect memory and learning ability. According to a analysis According to researchers at the University of Chile, the “passive use” of AI tools like ChatGPT can “undermine the very foundations of literacy.” The authors recognize that AI has a great potential in the educational field, but they warn of the need to work and “practice intensely with written texts” in order to develop “good reading comprehension and writing skills.” They agree with Sánchez that with reading we not only acquire information, but it is key to strengthening vocabulary, comprehension, reasoning and critical thinking. According to researchers, “reading acts as a workout for the brain.” The CEOs who no longer read Sánchez is not worried that his students have not read Bohemian lights; He is concerned that in the future they “will not understand” a news story when they read a newspaper, or that it will be more difficult for them to “understand the world in general, have the patience to stop, think, assimilate, be able to create an opinion…”. This is why a good use of technology must have a “prior basis.” Once the basic competencies and skills surrounding reading have been acquired, for Sánchez AI can be an ally. … Read more

Data centers consume a lot of water, but it is probably less than we thought. It’s a book’s fault

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We can criticize the AI ​​boom for many reasons, but there is one that deeply affected society: the environmental impact, more specifically water consumption of each interaction with the AI, necessary to be able to cool the servers. The problem is realbut everything indicates that it has been magnified and the origin would be a miscalculation in a popular book. the book. It is ‘Empire of AI’ written by Karen Hao and which we already talked about in Xataka. After interviewing hundreds of former employees and people close to the company, the author constructs a detailed and highly critical account of OpenAI, more specifically its CEO Sam Altman. Among the criticisms of this ‘AI empire’, Hao mentions the excessive water consumption of AI, going so far as to state that a data center would consume 1,000 times more water than a city of 88,000 inhabitants. The criticism. Andy Masley tells it in his newsletter The Weird Turn Pro. According to their calculations, in reality 22% of what the city consumes or 3% of the entire municipal system. Furthermore, Masley states that the book confuses water extraction (temporary withdrawal that is returned to the network) with real consumption. The calculation error. The author herself has responded to the article de Masley citing the email he sent to the Municipal Drinking Water and Sewage Service of Chile (SMAPA), from whom he requested information on the total water consumption of Cerrillos and Maipu, the towns he used to make the consumption comparison. The problem is that Hao requested the amount in liters, but they responded without specifying the units and everything indicates that they were actually cubic meters, hence the large discrepancy. The author has consulted again with the SMAPA to clarify this information. It seems that, indeed, there is an error. Estimates. How much water AI consumes has been a recurring question in recent years. In September 2024, a study published by Washington Post He calculated that, to generate a 100-word text with ChatGPT, 519 milliliters of water were needed. The calculation was made taking into account the total annual consumption of data centers and the type of cooling used. It’s truly outrageous. What companies say. AI companies are not very transparent regarding the water and energy consumption of their data centers. The big technology companies give the total annual consumption data in their sustainability reports. We know that a large part of the consumption goes to data centers, but it is not possible to know the real consumption of each search. Google has been the only one that has published specific energy and water consumption data from its AI. According to the company, the water consumption for each Gemini consultation was 0.26 milliliters, or in other words, about five drops of water. We cannot extrapolate this data to all data centers or all companies, but it does seem that previous estimates are quite exaggerated. Water controversy. All of this doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem with water and AI. In fact, the Cerrillos data center where the alleged calculation error is It was never built because the Chilean justice system paralyzed it. due to the climatic impact it was going to have, especially in the context of drought in which the region found itself. Data centers need a lot of water, so much so that initiatives are emerging to cool them submerging them in the ocean. The other problem. Water is just one of the problems data centers face, energy demand poses an even greater challenge. In 2024, Data centers already accounted for 4% of total electricity consumption in the United States and in the surroundings of some of these beasts the electricity bill has risen 267% in recent years. Big tech is already warning: there is no power for so many chips and they are being raised since create nuclear power plants until take their data centers to space. Image | Google In Xataka | What is happening in the US is a warning for Spain: data centers driving up electricity bills in homes

let them start reading romance books

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At a time when more and more couples need schedule sex As if it were a work meeting, it would seem that romantic spontaneity is on the way to extinction. Routine, stress, children, screens and lack of time have pushed many people to live desire as a reminder on the calendar. And yet, in the midst of this sexual recession, thousands of readers are finding an unexpected spark in a place that years ago would have sounded almost naive: romance novels and, especially, the romanticasythe hybrid between romance and fantasy that dominates sales charts and social networks like BookTok. Reading, the new spark of desire. A growing number of women describe how their sex life was disappearing until they started reading romances. In a report for the New York Timesa reader commented that she and her husband went from having sex “twice a month” to “twice a day.” It wasn’t magic, he explained that reading worked as an emotional and physical trigger that they had not experienced in years. In Women’s Healthanother woman recounted how, after a chain of medical problems and stress, her libido evaporated… Until the novels helped her feel connected again with her eroticism and with her partner. The secret seems to be in the mix of what is written in this type of novel: magical worlds, growing sexual tension, complex female characters and explicit scenes that place their pleasure at the center. It is no coincidence that sexologists and therapists describe this type of readings as a “gym of the imagination” that reactivates reactive desire—that which does not appear alone, but with appropriate stimuli. It does not activate only the body: it first activates the mind, fantasy and emotion. What this boom reveals. Beyond the morbidity, the increase in popularity of these readings speaks of something deeper. According to TIMEromance novels allow you to explore desire from a safe place: without pressure, without expectations, without fear of judgment. They are a mental space where you can allow yourself to fantasize, recover the feeling of being desired and understand what truly excites you. For many women it is the first time they connect with their sexuality out of curiosity and not out of obligation. As detailed in Betchesthese stories work as a psychological warm-up, key in long-term couples where desire usually fades not due to lack of attraction, but due to lack of imagination and novelty. This “reactive desire” needs stimulation—and books offer it without shame. Furthermore, this explosion cannot be understood without the community. BookTok has converted these readings in public conversation: recommendations, rankings of spicetheories, private jokes, covers analyzed to the millimeter. A shared culture that has made talking about sex, desire or fantasies out loud normalized. Love in times of screens. We live in a culture that idealizes sexual spontaneitybut reality does not accompany. Endless schedules, mental loads, attention-sucking social networks and suffocating routines leave very little room for spark. In fact, studies point to a global decline in sexual frequency, especially between young couples. It is not that there is no desire: there is no time for it to appear. For this reason, many couples have started planning sex. Anticipation—flirty messages, relaxed dinners, screen-free space—works better than waiting for the flame to magically appear. In other words, planning does not kill desire, it protects it; and this is where romantic novels fit in: they create anticipation, they build tension, they reintroduce the game. They are, for many people, a way to feel something similar to the beginning of the relationship again. A revolution with nuances. However, several experts—from the NYT until ABC Australia— also warn of risks: idealizing perfect encounters, expecting synchronized orgasms or pressuring the partner to replicate fantasies that may not fit their relationship. Distinguishing between fantasy and real life, therapists remember, is key for this boom to be a help and not a source of frustration. In a world without time for desire, reading reignites it. What these stories demonstrate is not that fiction replaces reality, but that it inspires it. That sexuality does not disappear: it goes dormant. And that, for many people, these books offer something that was missing in their lives: mental time, emotional space, imagination, play, and the feeling of being seen and wanted. In an era of planned sex, exhausted desire, and frenetic routines, romance novels have shown that intimacy doesn’t need spontaneity: needs intention. Perhaps that is why this phenomenon does not stop growing. Not because it promises impossible orgasms, but because it restores—without haste, without judgment—the desire to love and be loved. As one reader confesses interviewed by Women’s Healththe key is not in dragons or vampires, but in something much simpler: “It’s not the books. It’s that they reminded me of who I was.” Image | Unsplash Xataka | Romantasy has become the most read genre in the world. According to its Spanish authors, there is not even

Statistics tell us that we read more than before. The problem is that books are much simpler than a few years ago

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It is not the same to read much than reading well, just as not all books are the same. Some of these conclusions can be taken from a series of recently published statistics and that analyze reading habits both in the United States and Spain. Interestingly, trends in Spain seem to contradict those of the rest of the world, but … is positive news? Global descent. Antonio Ortiz told In his Newsletter ‘Causes and Azares’ that there has been a global decrease in the Reading habits. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US, the time dedicated to reading for pleasure fell 23 minutes in 2003 to 15 minutes in 2018, 40%, and the trend continued to reduce up to only 16% of the population that reads daily in 2023, as explained by the New York Times in Spanish. In the United Kingdom, the National Literacy Trust He found that in 2023 only 47% of adolescents said they regularly read for enjoyment, lowering 60% in 2005. The Iberian contrast. In Spain the data are more positive: the 2024 reading habits of the Ministry of Culture of Spain It indicates that 65.5% of readers do so by leisure, which represents the highest percentage in historical series. And 70.3% read books in general. In addition, for age stripes, 14 to 24 years represents the greatest readers (82.1%), while the indices fall in over 55 years, indicating that a habit of reading in young people who will give a more reader adult population is being found. Does that perspective make sense, are hopeful data for reading in Spain? Reasons to doubt. These data can be inflated by social bias: when responding to surveys, people tend to overreport Activities considered “educated” how to readand surpassed those perceived as “banal”, such as watching television and spending time with the mobile. And why do we doubt? Because the social prestige of reading is still in force (as reflected The controversy with María Pombo), and recent measurements, such as Eurobarometer 2025They talk that Spain is one of the European countries where more people link reading with being “more cultured and intelligent”, which probably explains some inflation in the answers. Shorter phrases, simpler readings. For example, as Ortiz also points out, ‘The Economist’ has detected that the vocabulary and grammatical structure of the Best-Sellers They have been simplified between the thirties and today: The phrases are 30% shorter due to the least amount of subordinate sentences. And there are more: academic investigations such as the COH-Metrix Project of the University of Memphis have measured that the average readability of the current best-seller equals the level High School Junior (16-17 years), while in the sixties and seventies it was closer to the initial university level (COH-Metrix). On the school level, data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that the active vocabulary of written adolescents has been reduced compared to decades ago. And, finally, essays like ‘Reader, eat home’ Maryanne Wolf warns how fragmented reading in digital media impoverishes the capacity for deep reading. We presume more than we read. If we combine these data with others, which tell us that the UNESCO esteem that only 5% of the population read a book per month or that 40.3% of Spaniards declares never read or almost nevera constant figure in the last decade, we find a certainly contradictory situation. We like to presume that we read, but they are perhaps fattened by our own perception. And in addition, they are readings of a complexity much lower than that of a few decades ago. With readers like that, who needs María Pombo. Header | Clay Banks in Unspash In Xataka | Alatriste’s new book revalidates a throne that remains empty: Pérez-Reverte has created our most popular franchise

More than 200,000 books for 11 euros a year. It is ‘The Free Books Club’ of Valencia, a paradise for printed paper devotees

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In a city like Valencia, not precisely lacking second -hand librariesa project has been born that goes beyond the mere business with volumes that have already lived one or more readings. It’s about ‘The Free Books Club ‘, a mixture of bookstore, paper trace, social club and NGOs Bibliophile that, in exchange for a minimum fee, allows its partners to take all the books they want. Its responsible is Rafael Soriano, who transmits an enthusiasm for reading perfectly In line with the philosophy of the premises: “All books are jewelry, some need a little mime and that is the goal of the club: save the books, pass them from good hands to others and in that way, among all, to have an immense library of people who want to continue keeping the books.” All books They deserve be read (As Rafael says, “a book can be a brick, but if you find a page, a paragraph, a text that tells you something, is already a good book”) and therefore preserved. That is why the Free Books Club ‘has an affordable partner share, 11 euros a year, which allows you to take all the books that are desired (To donate it is not even necessary to be a partner), return them or keep them if desired. The intention of the club is that no book is discarded, and of course, that leads to problems. The main one is that Rafael stopped counting the specimens in the premises when he reached 200,000, and the lack of space has forced him to stop classifying, archiving, listing and even restore those volumes they need. In the original place there are no more volumes, which has led them to resort to “partners who have some space at home, a garage, a small warehouse. When someone requests a large rescue, let’s say ten, twelve, fourteen boxes of books, in the premises of Valencia they do not fit.” The project has thus became a completely collaborative idea: the website centralizes the calls for help in search of space, and They estimate that right now they will be around 300,000 “saved” booksas Rafael likes to say. There are future and expansion plans although at the moment the relief comes from projects as another open club in Padrón (A Coruña) with similar operation. An agreement with emails has also been reached so that the partners can exchange books directly without going through the Valencia premises, again with the website as a meeting point. Although Rafael’s ambition goes further, and would like to see premises like his in other provinces, and “that the partners can take a book in Valencia, leave it in Cáceres, take one in Cáceres and leave it in Barcelona.” Computer to Guardian de Books Rafael Soriano started his career as a computer programmer: “I started computer studies before there were computer faculties. In the year 85 I started from 88 I dedicated myself to programming for different clients. In the end the fort of my programming was the management of bars and restaurants. “Later he made the leap to the other side of the screen:” For having met the sector, I was as manager of a bar-restaurant for a year, with thirty-so many employees on the beach. “ After dedicating almost ten years he transferred him and stayed “a little in limbo: I am not yet retired, but I don’t want to be at home, even if I have some resources to endure.” And in this way the club was born: “A little like Hobby, a little as a refuge.” And near the sea, “because I like to swim, see dawn swimming.” A completely born project of devotion to the printed page and has set in something more than a bookstore: A home for old books that serves as a transit in search of new houses. Or as Rafael says, “it is an alchemy workshop, that is, everything that is there is paper, it is an piled paper, but in the right hands it becomes gold.” In Xataka | Before he died, this man left a list of everything he had read in his life: 3,599 books of all kinds that you can now consult

3,599 books of all kinds that you can now consult

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If you are proud of your reading speed, turn side to side: earlier this year, Dan Pelzer died with 92 years, leaving behind A manuscript list of books which had read since 1962. An enormous amount of readings that has generated an unusual interest among fans, since it raises a great diversity of issues on habits and reading records. 3,599 books. That is the amount of volume published in a document that has enabled the searchso you can locate your favorites there. Your goal to read such a amount: try to read a hundred daily pages. Pelzer began to maintain the list when he was destined in Nepal as a volunteer of the peace body, and kept it until 2023, when he had no choice but to leave the reading and after many years as a retiree. Tars. Many of these books betray an indisputable interest in Christianityreligion that Pelzer practiced, according to his relatives, devoutly. There is also abundance of history books, which led him to read no less than ‘History of Civilization’ of Will and Ariel Durant, a huge work in twelve volumes, which if we attend to the registration dates, he took from the library apparently disorderly. However, Pelzer did not disgust authors of Best Self Like Stephen King, Ken Follett or John Grisham. Why the list is interesting. Comments on articles like thisthat they break down the story of Pelzer, demonstrate to what extent in digital times this type of feats touch a fiber. Pelzer’s commitment to reading has its abundant critics (one states that “only about 15% of books are critical of the status quo or show the world from a non -homogeneous perspective. The guy read more than 3,500 books, but only to confirm their own beliefs “), but That vision has all the meaning of the world: His own son described the list in an interview as “a microcosm of his life.” The importance of libraries. It is logical that Columbus Metropolitan Library will take the work of digitizing and visible the list as a tribute to one of its most voracious visitors. For many readersthis list actually hides a real tribute to public libraries as essential tools for democratization of access to knowledge. A 2022 PEW survey He talked about the Americans to read on average 14 books in the year, much less than Pelzer’s 60 annuals. And in a moderate income man, the library plays an essential role. To read all. If you want to undertake the task of imitating the huge amount of Pelzer readings, remember that we have A list of tips to read 200 books a year. The methodology is simple: find a space of daily tranquility and click on it. Always carry a book on. Leave what you have to leave, do not become a torture. And yes, of course, turn off the mobile. Pelzer’s milestone is within your reach. In Xataka | More and more people use chatgpt to read books for them. Has advantages and enormous inconvenience

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