About that book...

I forgot to mention the book I was supposed to finish this past weekend. Needless to say, between all the wonders there were to see and the interesting conversations with my wonderful traveling companion, I didn't have as much time to read as I anticipated. In fact, I didn't read at all until I got on the plane to come home!

I still haven't finished the book, but what I read on the plane ride made a two and a half hour flight feel like I'd only been on the plane fifteen minutes. :) I really do love this book already! It is one of those books that you keep meaning to read, but something else (or some other book) comes along. I didn't really give it the full attention it deserved until I found myself sitting beside a stranger on a plane that I didn't care to talk to. (After all, I saw the title of the book he was reading and decided that it was best that we didn't speak at all. Lol...)

So, let me say this about my book so far: The Shadow of the Wind is rich with beautiful words and phrases. I find myself highlighting more than usual. I also find myself saying the sentences out loud to myself, just to hear the flow of words (and, no, I did not do the read aloud on the plane). I also came up with a new tab title: Truths. There are many of those in this book. They deserved a tab. :)

Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:

"I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time."

"I glided up to the first floor, blessing the blades of a fan that swirled above the sleepy readers, melting like ice cubes over their books."

"In my schoolboy reveries, we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into world of fiction and secondhand dreams."

"One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep."

"Without further ado I left the place, finding my route by the marks I had made on the way in. As I walked in the dark through the tunnels and tunnels of books, I could not help being overcome by a sense of sadness. I couldn't help thinking that if I, by pure chance, had found a whole universe in a single unknown book, buried in the endless necropolis, tens of thousands more would remain unexplored, forgotten forever. I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot."