Truer than …
Reading the book in Barcelona, this phrase resonated as I'd discovered the simple snack you can order alongside your drink...
We exist while we are remembered
This theme captivates me and I have other quotations on the idea that we live for as long as someone...
Making invisible friends
This is a book lover's book, and the protagonist is the son of a bookseller, whose bookshop he takes over...
Another context, another grin
Having recently found a seashore's surf likened to a grin, I was struck by the keyboard...
Dead languages or dormant minds?
There are some marvelous characters in The Shadow of the Wind, several of them highly opinionated and articulate orators, who...
As natural as…
If someone said 'as natural as...' what would pop into your mind? 'Tap water' seems unusual, but when we are...
Riding the spine of a book
The book as a kind of flying broomstick or galloping horse taking the boy into story land.
'In my schoolboy...
Technicolor-green fields
Fermín is a character who has done time as a tramp, and perhaps because of the hunger he's suffered, he...
The pitfalls of childhood
What a sad commentary on the wounds we inflict on children before they are equipped to comprehend what has happened...
Tar-black skies
This struck me because it's a rare sight, skies are rarely tar-black in or near cities. But this is Barcelona...
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books
The whole intricate plot of Ruiz Zafón's Shadow of the Wind begins with his father taking him to this labyrinthine...
Moth-ridden masterpieces
The Shadow of the Wind assembles a posse of 'bibliophile knights' who hang out in cafés to save the moribund...
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