Purchased for my May book club.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
Barcelona, 1945 - Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes one day to find that he can no longer remember his mother's face. To console his only child, Daniel's widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona's guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel's father coaxes him to choose a book from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the book he selects, a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax's work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last of Carax's books in existence. Before Daniel knows it, his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness, and doomed love, and before long he realizes that if he doesn't find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.

I loved this book. The story was intriguing, well-written, captivating, engrossing, and a bunch of other adjectives that will only fall short of expressing my feelings. I don't usually read gothic so the shadowy prose was an interesting change. And surely it doesn't rain so much in Barcelona. In someone's comments somewhere I read that the lack of color in the book makes you visualize the whole thing in black and white. This is uncannily true. Except for Lain's eyes, that is. I kind of had an inkling of who he was about halfway through the book, but it didn't spoil the ending. I wish that I hadn't been in such a hurry to finish this one for my book club because it is one that should be savored. I am almost sorry that I registered it, otherwise it could join my personal collection, but I have so I will bid it a fond adieu (and more than likely buy myself another copy). Gotta support Carlos so he can afford to write more books. :)

And finally, though I don't usually do this, a couple of fantastic quotes from the book....

"Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens...In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new reader's hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody's best friend. Now they have only us..."

"Television, my dear Daniel, is the Antichrist, and I can assure you that after only three or four generations, people will no longer even know how to fart on their own and humans will return to living in caves, to medieval savagery, and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that."

"Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day."

Fantastic book. Highly recommended. I am going to see if my girls want to imbibe in the nectar of The Shadow of the Wind.

Going on a mini bookray...

pjmom8025 (moved ahead due to personal hand-off opportunity)
Ragdyann422
RlyLv2Rd
RlyLv2Rd's mystery bookcrosser

Enjoy!

RELEASE NOTES:

Handing off to pjmom8025 at our girlie gathering.

Got this from Arugh48187 at our gal pal meetup. I will be reading this soon, but have a few ahead of it. I will pass it on to the other gal pals when done.

Okay, I went to bed at 10:30 this evening and couldn't sleep. Tossed and turned for an hour and finally gave up. Grabbed this book off the bedside table and started to read.... So now, it's the book that's keeping me awake. Great story so far. Thanks Arugh for passing this on to me!!

I enjoyed this book. I liked the twists and turns of this story and how it all come together in the end.
I hope that Zafon writes another.

Holding for Ragdyann422.

Wow! I finally got to this book and I'm so glad!!! I really enjoyed it! (Devon did, too! He read it before I did.) I spent an entire day of vacation reading until I was done. Once you figure out who is doing the bookburning, you don't lose interest because you still don't know why and I loved that....it was like film noir in my head with a gothic Victorian twist. The characters were compelling & even though there were a lot of detours from the mystery you follow right along waiting to see what each road will bring. I also liked speaking all the Spanish names in my head. Teehee! :)

I am not even sure who my mystery bookcrosser is (I am probably forgetting some personal joke in there, too). Can't wait to delve into this one since I have heard rave reviews!

Let me know if anyone else wants a gander!

I really got into this book in the onset, though I must say it dragged on a bit too long for me. I kind of had it all figured out too quickly and kind of meandered through it vs. my usual plundering through quickly. Unfortunately with a lot of long hours of work and spring duties instead of just plowing on and enjoying it I had days to ponder on it, and days to forget the details. A great book, but I wish I hadn't figured it all out before the end. Thanks for sharing...Now off to _________.

RELEASE NOTES:

Sending this as a very belated thank you for the wonderful RABCK crazy-book-lady sent me. Hope you enjoy it!

I came home to find this in my mailbox today! Thank you soooooo much RlyLv2Rd!!! I put this on my wishlist a few months ago, but in the past month I have had it emphatically recommended to me by at least three people I know who are big readers. This is definitely going on the very top of Mt. TBR...assuming I can reach that high!

Thank you for thinking of me RlyLv2Rd! And thank you for the postcard and the gorgeous bookmark. You are so sweet!

I went to make a note that I had given this book to my mother-in-law to read and release, and was horrified to see that I hadn't made I journal entry after I had read it. Oops! I did actually read the book last August (2006), around about the time we found out we were pregnant, and then that we were having twins. Needless to say, my mind has been elsewhere for the past 10 months! Our twins were born in February and I think I am just coming out of the fog now. I do remember that I enjoyed the book, but was not as blown away by it as I thought I would be, considering the strong recommendations it was given.

Thanks again RlyLv2Rd, and sorry for the late, late journal entry!

The book is now in Nova Scotia, and hopefully will be released once my mother-in-law has read it.