The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Few times I named this book as my favourite so I should present it to you. This is not the review, just me worshiping this book, there are plenty reviews of this book around.

Buy this book - I'm quite sure that you can find it in any library or bookstore 

Author's Website

Book summary:

Barcelona, 1945. Just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday 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 volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, '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 one 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.

The fact is that I’ll never be able to write a real review of this book. Here is why :

1. I’m not good enough.
I’m not now and I’ll never be. It doesn’t matter how many books you have read or how smart you are, you’re never good enough for that. You won’t be able to find exact words and it’s not just you. Only person who can is the author himself, but I think he already said everything he wanted.
Don’t believe me? 
- Books are mirrors - you only see in them what you already have inside you.
- The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.
- A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.
- There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.
- 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.
Do you now?

2. It’s imposible.
I’ll try to describe it. It’s not the same feeling but the result is. You know that moment or better said that feeling when you see someone who means a lot for you and you have that beautiful feeling inside of you. Now try to describe it.You can’t? I know.

3. And last but not least....
Please allow me to qoute the author:
Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later — no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget — we will return.
And this is mine.

Until the next time,