The Shadow of the Wind
Ratings587
Average rating4.1
Simply phenomenal
This is, without a doubt, up there with one of the best books I've read. It's not the usual genre I go with but the blurb highly intrigued me and I simply could not stop reading (and listening) to this book.
It is is written in such a way that it is almost poetic. It has also taught me a lot about the city of bafcona both geographically and historically and makes me want to return to the feature-rich city.
The story itself keeps you hooked with every word. With the way you love certain characters and dislike others, you're vying for the future of all the characters that are being written about at the time.
If you're looking for a book with a bit of mystery, intrigue, character, romance and that is wonderfully written, do not miss this book!
This one had me hooked from the very first page! The narrative is exquisite, the book is very intense and so full of emotion. I just couldn't put it down! It's all you expect from a book. It is a thorough entertainer 😋
I don't read mysteries really, but I do like them (mostly in the movies), I also really enjoy gothic romance and The Shadow of the Wind combines these two genres in a story that will reel you in and not let you go while it sweeps you through dilapidated houses, cobbled streets and the lives of characters flawed and bound to a spiralling fate of love, heartbreak and hate.
It is a novel that requires you to sit back and allow the puzzle pieces to slowly fall in place, not to be rushed, but to seep in with each thread woven into the story. Along the way you are enveloped by the scents, mood and sights of Barcelona through mist, rain, night and changing seasons while the characters amass an intricate story filled with dark surprises.
It is a perfect story for a stormy evening or a snowy, cold afternoon.
An ode to stories both written and those we write with our lives.
A great book and one I highly recommend if you enjoy mystery, gothic romance and the art of storytelling.
An enthralling tale from start-to-finish. There were quite a few plot-points that I didn't see coming. Although sometimes the narrator, Daniel, had the voice of a thirty-year-old man than a child, even when he was a child, but since the story was told in retrospect, that came to make a lot more sense. One of the few books I've read that has an almost mosaic, spellbinding prose and just enough details to entice without feeling bare-boned. This was the first full-length Spanish-language novel that I read when I was about sixteen, and I thoroughly was enamoured with it. That feeling hasn't changed one bit in reading the English. This is one I would recommend both in Spanish and English to a lot of my fellow readers.
A back-cover blurb from The Washington Post calls this book “touching, tragic and thrilling,” and those are three words that perfectly describe The Shadow of the Wind. It's a romance, a mystery, a grand adventure and something else that I can't quite pinpoint. I loved it.
Such a wonderful, poetic beginning. Within the first pages, I was enraptured by the descriptive sentiments of the protagonist concerning his love of books and reading. However, as the main plot was introduced, I found that I did not care for it. I only wanted more about The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. I enjoyed the novel, which included memorable characters and locations, however, I didn't care about learning about this fictitious author and his life. It was an interesting novel; I don't regret reading it, but I don't care to read it again.
“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.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
“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.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
“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.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
La sombra del viento es un relato que te lleva a Barcelona de la primera mitad del siglo XX, de una manera que te sientes recorriéndole y comprendiendo lo que sientes los personajes.
Muy entretenido y fácil de leer.
I was pleasantly surprised with this book. I started it with little to no expectations, and it started slow... But I can leave a book once started so I read on and somewhere along the line I got so invested in Carax that but the end I couldn't put the book down!!!
I understand that, in many ways, women in the time period the novel is set were far more vulnerable than they are now in the 21st century, but surely they are not as completely helpless as they are portrayed to be... Surely even a woman of the mid-20th century would be intelligent enough to, at the bare minimum, avoid a man who so strongly radiates ???cruelty and hate??? ??? especially since she has already survived enough of the world to carve out a life and decent living for herself? While I am certain that, yes, a woman can be that self-destructive, regardless of the time period she lives in, what bothers me is that this whole mess does nothing to develop the character from who she was before. Instead, it destroys her ??? and for no other reason than it provides context (perhaps even excuses?) a male character???s atrocious behaviour, as well as providing some kind of sick illustration of what happens to women who cease to be virtuous.
Full review here: http://wp.me/p21txV-zV
Really strong writing with a gripping plot but much too long for the story. The writer kept adding more and more details that seemed unimportant and made my attention wander.
A satisfying page turner set in post-WWII and civil war Barcelona. The story hinges around a boy's determination to find out what happened to the author of a book that he found in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The past is very much present, because most of the characters have a history from the civil war that they are carrying forward.
Unfortunately this one just wasn't for me. I didn't hate it but I tried to read it 4 times (1 above my usual attempt limit as a friend recommended it!) but just can't get into it. When reading it just feels like nothing is happening. I understand it's translated but the narrative is just so slow. I was so excited with the concept of a cemetery of lost books but it just didn't pan out well for me!
It's very hard to categorize this book. There are some fantastical elements, but it reads like historical fiction. It's a mystery with a love story at its core, more than one, maybe. The story is set in 1930s Barcelona, a time and place of unrest that is generally just glossed over in American history books right before the WWII chapter. Learning about the time period and how the characters existed in it was interesting in its own right. Then, you meet the characters, each hiding a myriad of secrets that unfold slowly as the pages turn. There's Fermin, the homeless man of a thousand faces and pieces of wisdom. There's the brutal inspector who has changed his coat so many times no one knows whose side he is on. Everyone is complex and interesting, down to the neighbors who only appear for a few sentences a chapter.
It's also a story about books, about how books give people life and bind people together. About how stories teach us about our own lives as we search for ourselves within the pages. I think that's the theme that resonated most with me. The protagonist, Daniel, begins the story by finding a book and then watches as his search for the author slowly turns into a mirror of the author's life, characters weaving in and out between both reader and writer's stories.
I really think most people could find something to enjoy in this book, especially if you already love books themselves. That's the final recommendation, I suppose. If you like books, you'll probably like this book.
A book-lover's book:
This was a beautifully written and very fun book. It is a winding and twisting story filled with Gothic themes and a dozen smaller stories entwined within it. What makes it a book for book-lovers is that it is about a boy whose life is turned upside down after reading a darkly beautiful book that seems eerily similar to the one you are reading. This book is essentially a statement on itself and to a greater extent, a statement on the power a book can have on those who read them.
Metaphor aside, the plot is great, the characters are great and the writing is superb. There are mysteries and surprises throughout and just as you feel you have a grip on what's going on, the story takes a mad and unexpected twist. The characters are flawed but lovable - even the enemies. The whole world has the feel of being a slightly fantastic version of real life; Devils and curses are everywhere, but in post-war Spain, it is still very real and gritty. Finally, the quotes and notable phrases are non-stop! This book did not change my world the way the main character's book did, but I had a lot of fun reading it.
I didn't especially like the writing style, where large chunks of the story are filled in by various characters who unceremoniously spill it all out in monologues; I prefer dialogue and action to reveal the story. The protagonist wasn't relatable, he seemed only half-formed when compared to other characters and so I only cared half as much about whatever happened with him. The supporting cast, specifically Fermin and the father, were the characters who actually felt real and worth caring about.
At the end of the day it's all about whether or not the book was a good read. For me, the good bits just did not stretch far enough to make the rest of the book worth it.
It's the Princess Bride written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, read to a young Fred Savage by Emberto Eco. It's a gothic thriller, coming of age, roiling caper, noir, love story about books.
Daniel Sempere is taken by his father to The Cemetery of Lost Books where he gets to chose a book to adopt and keep alive forever. He settles on The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax, certain that it had been waiting for him there for years, since before he was born. The book begins to bleed into his life and over the next 10 years he tries to unravel the mystery of what happened to the author Julian Carax and why someone, named after the devil in one of Carax's novels, horribly disfigured and smelling of burned paper, is intent on destroying every bit of the author's work.
It's deliciously gothic, bordering on, as Stephen King puts it, cheesy. It's translated from the Spanish, who I can only assume don't mind having a ton of names dropped on them. While not quite the mess of One Hundred Years of Solitude where everyone is named Arcadio or Aureliano it's still way more characters than I normally have to juggle. Each offers a tiny thread that Daniel will need to decipher what has happen to the elusive Julian. I would have been happy to travel the streets of Barcelona with Daniel and his motley group of compatriots but it gets neatly, maybe a bit too neatly, wrapped up in the end.
[b:The Shadow of the Wind 9529 The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1) Carlos Ruiz Zafón https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347296353s/9529.jpg 3209783] is a coming of age story set in postwar Spain. But it is much more than that. It is also a mystery story, one stretching over years. Furthermore it is a story of love, of hate, of loss, of vengeance, and even a bit of redemption.Good book.
My father left this book at my house with the comment, “I can't get into this one, maybe you'll like it.”So with that glowing recommendation, it sat on my shelf for months, until I needed something to pack for a long-haul flight to Europe, and so it found its way into my luggage – not without some misgivings on my part. “I'm boarding a ten-hour flight with no wifi and no seat-back TV,” I texted a friend before taking off. “I only have one book with me, so here's hoping it's not too awful.”Suffice to say that, as far as my packing decisions go, I have no regrets. The blurb that compares it to Alexandre Dumas written by Umberto Eco by way of Jorge Luis Borges wasn't too far off the mark.It is not without its flaws, but I forgive it those because I'm easily won over by stories-within-stories; gothic themes of mystery, tragic love, fate, obsession and madness; and depictions of a particular time and place (Zafón knocks this last one of the park with his extraordinarily vivid Barcelona).Like [b:Palimpsest 3973532 Palimpsest Catherynne M. Valente https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320532857s/3973532.jpg 4019291], I love this book without being able to tell if it's a genuinely good book wrapped in the trappings of a guilty pleasure or vice versa.
Pocos libros me obsesionan, pocos son los que logran robarme el sueño y este libro logró lo que no sentía hace tiempo.
Las palabras de Ruiz Zafón son espectaculares, se puede sentir que cada palabra ha sido escrita con una maestría y genialidad única que sólo vi en autores clásicos. Su narración es hermosa y la historia es cautivadora, tanto como lo fue “La sombra del viento” (Julián Carax) para Daniel Sempere. Además, con este libro, uno revive el amor por los libros y de pronto, uno recuerda que son más que pedazos de papel, sino, como dice el mismo autor: son espejos.
I finally opted to give up on this book, settling for reading a quick summary just to find out what all the hubbub was about. I found it boring, quite frankly. I spent the whole time waiting for a reason to care about the characters, or for the story to grab my interest. I found the dialogue between characters to be unrealistic, and while the book is beautifully written with some fantastic descriptions, the story seemed to drag along. I have read similar ‘twist ending' mysteries before with writing styles and structure I've enjoyed far more. For me, the book just never went from ‘sounding like one I'd really enjoy' to BEING a book I really enjoy.
It took me a while to get through this, although at ~486 pages it's not all that long, but I did enjoy it. Set in postwar Spain, it's about Daniel Sempere, a young boy who discovers an obscure book of which few copies remain – because an unknown figure has been seeking out and destroying all copies of it. Sempere's investigation covers years and entails danger to both his person and his personal relationships.
Sempere is likeable, well-meaning if not always sensible; the supporting cast has plenty of charm, especially friend and confidant Fermín Romero de Torres. I am often wary of translated titles, only because I have seen too many translations that butchered the author's voice; I thought Lucia Graves' work here was exemplary. Recommended.