Never say never again, so goes the saying.

Well, I have lived it now. Yesterday I found myself doing something I had mentioned many times I did not think I could do: reading a book on the small screen of my iPhone.

Yes, sir, I caught me in the act.

There I was in the gate, at the Tampa airport, and waiting to board Lufthansa 483 to Frankfurt, and reading Zoe Valdes‘ La Habana Mon Amour right on the small screen of my iPhone X. It came naturally. I had the phone in my hand (as usual), and I had twenty minutes before boarding, and so I tapped Kindle and continued reading where I had left off on my iPad Pro the night before. And, so, I started reading this novel actually on my MacBook Air last week, then caught up with the reading on my iPad Pro usually before going to sleep, but now I am reading on the iPhone.

To my surprise, it is not difficult at all to read on the iPhone.

So, I confess that I now am a fully certified multiplatform reader, the profile of that person I mention often in my presentations, but which was never me: one story, one reader, several platforms.

Count me in!

About La Habana Mon Amour

I am a fan of the works of Zoe Valdes, the Paris-based Cuban writer. She has a love affair with Habana, the city where she was born (and where I grew up), and her writing is part poetry, part diary, tons of reminiscing about streets that I remember as a child, and, overall, a sense of nostalgia for the beautiful city now in decay that I remember fondly.

Valdes decides to write this love letter to the city of her birth as Havana prepares to celebrate its 495 years of existence.

In the introduction she writes:

“The Havana that you will read about here is the Havana of my experiences, the Havana of my comings and goings as a young girl, the Havana of my favorite writers, the Havana of my ghosts, those that I chose and those that chose me.”

For me, it is the Havana that she takes me to, down to specific streets and corners that I thought I remembered vaguely from my youth, but that Zoe Valdes punctuates with such preciseness that I see myself there, clearly, as if it was yesterday, and not 1962.

For her blog (in Spanish):

https://zoevaldes.net

Quote for reflection

At a speech Tuesday night, Dean Baquet, managing editor of The New York Times, said:

“The president may not like or understand what we do… In fact, it is in his interest to undermine us… But we move ahead, protecting the principle that inquiry and reporting are what matter most of all. That in an age when certainty and snark sometimes pass for journalism, absolutely nothing is more important to us than the joyful and serious pursuit of the deepest knowledge and understanding.”