It started with a #kindletweet:
- @jtauber you should read "El mundo amarillo" from Albert Espinosa. ""Anyone would know that," said Dorothy." http://t.co/Q40kIMqj7s
— Gema R. Quintana (@rubiq) August 4, 2014
What, you may ask, is a #kindletweet?
At the time, Gema was in hospital and she wasn't allowed to use her iPhone outside of visiting hours.
She could, however, use her Kindle and, with the highlighting feature hooked up to Twitter, could effectively send tweets, albeit always attached to some random quote in a book.
In this case, however, the quote seemed oddly appropriate.
Gema is the most inspiring person I've never met (except on Twitter) and this was clearly a book that had inspired her so I was keen to find out what it was all about.
The English translation of El mundo amarillo (The Yellow World) was not available on Kindle in the US and the printed version was only available from a third-party but I finally got around to ordering it and it arrived today.
Side note: the author, Albert Espinosa, is the creator of the TV series that has just been remade in the US as the Red Band Society.
Espinosa was born exactly two weeks before me, in Barcelona.
At the age of 14, he was diagnosed with cancer and spent the next ten years in and out of hospitals. He lost a leg, a lung and part of his liver.
El mundo amarillo is his memoir and his view of life stemming from that experience with cancer.
I can't help but point out that on page 1, he says he's left-handed (like me).