I have a very long way to catch up with Luis Soriano, who brings his mobile library from village to village in Colombia.

“I started out with 70 books, and now I have a collection of more than 4,800,” said Soriano, 36, a primary school teacher who lives in a small house here with his wife and three children, with books piled to the ceilings.

“This began as a necessity, then it became an obligation, and after that a custom,” he explained, squinting at the hills undulating into the horizon. “Now,” he said, “it is an institution.”

I haven’t quite got to the “piled to the ceilings” point, although I do have a few hundred books scattered about the place and in some interesting, if impractical for use, stacks.

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