I’m on a posting roll here, folks!

I am quite the avid reader and will read just about anything I can get my hands on, including cereal boxes and toilet paper wrappers. I think it makes sense for me to write about some of the books I read because I love sharing good stories and books. There’s just something so wholesome and good about reading and books… I love collecting them and I cherish them as some of my best friends.

I do have a few favourite authors and genres, but lately I have been stealing books from my mom’s bookclub list. Some of them are kind of crappy, but occasionally I’ll strike upon a golden one, like The Shadow of the Wind: Carlos Ruis Zafon.

I really loved this book because it’s essentially a story about books, and how they can draw you into their stories, and reflect your own realities at the same time. There’s a lot of really great parallels in this novel, and it’s very romantic… not in the kisses-and-sappy-lovemaking way, but in the love stories and tragedies that are involved. I really couldn’t put this down and neglected my laundry as a result last week 🙁

“The time is the 1950s; the place, Barcelona. Daniel Sempere, the son of a widowed bookstore owner, is 10 when he discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. The novel is rare, the author obscure, and rumors tell of a horribly disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find of Carax’s novels. The man calls himself Laín Coubert-the name of the devil in one of Carax’s novels.

As he grows up, Daniel’s fascination with the mysterious Carax links him to a blind femme fatale with a “porcelain gaze,” Clara Barceló; another fan, a leftist jack-of-all-trades, Fermín Romero de Torres; his best friend’s sister, the delectable Beatriz Aguilar; and, as he begins investigating the life and death of Carax, a cast of characters with secrets to hide.

Officially, Carax’s dead body was dumped in an alley in 1936. But discrepancies in this story surface. Meanwhile, Daniel and Fermín are being harried by a sadistic policeman, Carax’s childhood friend. As Daniel’s quest continues, frightening parallels between his own life and Carax’s begin to emerge.

Ruiz Zafón strives for a literary tone, and no scene goes by without its complement of florid, cute and inexact similes and metaphors (snow is “God’s dandruff”; servants obey orders with “the efficiency and submissiveness of a body of well-trained insects”). Yet the colorful cast of characters, the gothic turns and the straining for effect only give the book the feel of para-literature or the Hollywood version of a great 19th-century novel. “

This summary from Amazon.ca doesn’t really do the book justice, you really just have to read it. I was particularly interested in it because it takes place in Barcelona, and I was able to make the connection between scenes in the book and the actual places I saw while I was in Barcelona a few years ago.

So there you have it. I’ve actually finished reading this book and am onto another bookclub steal, but I strongly encourage you to give this one a read! I’m sure your local library (or mom!) has a copy you can borrow.

I’d love to hear if any of my readers have read this book, and what they think of it!