Much has been written about the pleasure that a good book produces in the hands of a reader, for in them we find not only intellectual satisfaction, but also aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual satisfaction; for this reason, the Nicaraguan modernist Rubén Darío said: “Books are strength, courage, power, food; a torch of thought and a source of love.”

Some of the most famous friends of books have defined them with the most beautiful word in the Spanish language: love, because in them they find the source to satiate their spirit, enrich the soul and calm their yearning for answers to human existence.

The great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca said that the word book was magic and that it was equivalent to saying love, since in his opinion the peoples of the world should ask to have them in their homes as they demanded the need for our daily bread or as they longed for rain for their crops.

The famous Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges, on the subject of reading, said: “I believe that the phrase 'obligatory reading' is a contradiction in terms; reading should not be obligatory. Should we speak of obligatory pleasure? Why? Pleasure is not compulsory; pleasure is something we seek. Compulsory happiness! Happiness is also something we seek.”

This lover of literature, who considered paradise to be a kind of library, was of the opinion that if a book bores the reader, he should put it aside, no matter how famous, how fashionable or how old it may be.

“If a book is tedious for you, put it down; even if that book is Paradise Lost - for me it is not tedious - or Don Quixote - which for me is not tedious either. But if there is a book that is tedious for you, don't read it; that book was not written for you”, said the winner of the 1979 Cervantes Prize.

The author of El Aleph did not hesitate to describe reading as one of the forms of happiness and said: “I would advise you to read a lot, not to let yourselves be frightened by the reputation of the authors, to continue searching for personal happiness, personal enjoyment. That is the only way to read.

Some recommendations of excellent books to read these days:

Marguerite Yourcenar - Memoirs of Hadrian.

Dulce María Loynaz - Poetry

Jorge Amado - Gabriela, cloves and cinnamon

Pablo Neruda - Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

Antonio Skármeta - Neruda's Postman

Franz Kafka - The Trial

Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Gabriel García Márquez - Love in the Time of Cholera

Emily Dickinson - Poems

Fina García Marruz - Poetry

J. D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

William Golding - Lord of the Flies

Kenzaburo Oé - A Personal Matter

Juan Rulfo - Pedro Páramo

José Martí - The Campaign Diaries

Mario Vargas Llosa - Conversation in The Cathedral

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

Eduardo Galeano - The Book of Embraces