What to read during confinement and beyond
Here is how you can find things to read during this confinement period and afterwards.
It seems that this self-isolation period will last for a while yet. A report by the Generalitat de Catalunya Health department works on the basis that the confinement will last until June, so if you’ve already listened to the entire range of podcasts and seen all the series on line that we proposed, here’s a selection of the media and channels available to read literature or journalism in Catalan. In passing, we’ll also lend a hand to all the bookshops that have had to close their doors recently.
‘Ebooks’
Publishers such as Stonberg, Grup 62, l’Encobert, Males Herbes and Llibres del Delicte have decided to distribute books free of charge. Every two days, Stonberg publishes a free e-book to download and Llibres del Delicte offers them free of charge to anyone unable to pay for them. Males Herbes, Editorial l’Encobert and Grup 62 are offering some of the books on their websites free of charge to whoever wants them. In addition to this range is the catalogue of thousands of works of public domain in the Catalan libraries.
Magazines
If you like reading a good article or a food review, Associació d’Editors de Revistes i Digitals (APPEC) is offered one month of its publications free of charge through the online news stand iQuiosc. One way of giving its catalogue a chance and supporting it when things improve is to subscribe, as many of its magazines are currently at their limit.
Llibreries Obertes (Open Bookshops)
For many bookshops, Sant Jordi is a key day in terms of sales: almost one third of their turnover is earned on this day and the days leading up to it. The announcement of the postponement of the festivity has been a huge blow to the book industry in general, and to bookshops especially. The cultural cooperative Som* and the communication agency Mortensen have therefore set up the Llibreries Obertes (Open Bookshops) initiative. The website for this campaign promotes the purchase of books in advance so that bookshop owners can still pay their running expenses while they are closed. Users pay for 50% of the book in advance and, once the bookshops re-opens and the purchaser can go to pick it up, the business will charge the remaining 50%. This means that, once the end of the confinement period has been ruled, we will have saved our bookshop owner of reference. It’s worth taking part!
Have you heard of any other initiatives? Tell us about them on Twitter, linking your message with the account @puntCAT!
