Excuse me, dear readers, we’ll have to generalize here…
whether or not the Portuguese read
My experiences here in the rural areas suggest they don’t. When we were still an “Alojamento rural,” before the COVID pandemic hit, I rarely saw a book on the bedside table when I went to do the room. Quite a few Portuguese guests came over on weekends, especially in the early and late season.
Arrive Friday evening, leave at a leisurely pace Sunday afternoon. It was ideal for us. Time to get things done during the week, and time for the guests on the weekend. They’d go on a trip after breakfast – to the beach, to Conimbriga, to the market in Louriçal, to Coimbra to admire the university and its famous library.
But … I didn’t see many books on the bedside table.
The big questions alwayswere: how does the television work? And what’s the internet password? I always had to ask my son Broes for those questions, because I have absolutely no idea about television, since I rarely use it. Those devices are getting more and more complicated under the guise of user-friendliness. I don’t see the friendliness, actually.
Now, I come from a family of readers. Bookcases are a normal part of your furniture, even though they’re usually no longer in the living room. The readers among us often have a special room because you accumulate quite a few over a lifetime. And well, you don’t throw away books once you’ve finished them.
Why and wat about this books and reading writing?
That’s because António Lobo Antunes, a big name in the Portuguese writing world, recently passed away. This Portuguese writing world hosts many other big names, including a Nobel Prize winner. In 1998, José Saramago won it, the first and, so far, only Portuguese author ever.
The first ever bookstore chain is also Portuguese. Livraria Bertrand opened its doors in Lisbon in 1732, and has thus been trading the written word for almost 300 years. The most beautiful bookstore is located in the center of Porto.
Lello e Irmão has always attracted many visitors because of its outstanding interior, but since the rumor that J.K. Rowling was inspired by the magnificent staircases for the book “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, and because she was living in Porto at the time, things have completely gotten out of hand. You have to buy tickets to go in.
Now, an impressive 14.8 million books are sold in Portugal, so there are readers! And the percentage is rising – by 6.9% in 2025. Percentages never really mean anything to me, but the upward trend in that message is something to be optimistic about.
Reading is a very special thing – you use your brain in a completely different way than when you watch a movie or video. And gaming is in a completely different part of the brain – one that I apparently don’t have. When you read, you use your imagination, and I suspect that’s exactly what an old friend of mine meant when he said:
It’s up to you to decide what that is. (It’s true in both cases, by the way.)
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(Disclaimer: I’m a bit tired of the keyword stuff and Google’s dictatorship. So here they are, and I’m also hoping for the cleverness of AI in this matter that it will still be found and read, but that I don’t have to force myself to use the right terms in the title and headings.#books #Portugal #LelloeIrmão )
We moved here in 2000 from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to the Termas-da-Azenha, Portugal. We started to rebuild one of portugals cultural heirlooms: Termas-da-Azenha, an old spa.You’ll find mosaics and paintings everywhere.Since Covid we rent the houses for a longer period of time, not as holiday houses anymore.
Each week a little blog about what is happening around us. An easy read. A few minutes in another world. A little about what it going on in Portugal. If you plan your holiday to Portugal, it might be a nice preparation.
In the weekend we publish it on Bluesky, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.