The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
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Book Summary Information
Author: Carlos Ruiz ZafónTranslator: Lucia Graves
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-02-01
ISBN: 0143034901
Number of pages: 487
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780143034902
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Shadow of the Wind
Book Review: For Every BOOK Lover...
Summary: 5 Stars
Whenever I read a book I underline key phrases or words that impact me in some way or another. During my recent flight from NYC to Los Angeles I finished a fabulous epic novel by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. In July, I was vacationing on the Carribean Island of Anguilla and I came across the book inside a basket in the living area of the Cove Castles restort. I started thumbing through the pages and thought it might be something I'd like to read. I was attracted by the fact that it was an epic Gothic-type novel that had spent two years on SPAIN's best-seller list. In the early pages a critic wrote that like A.S. Byatt's POSSESSION it is an ultimate love letter to literature. I found that to be true. The more lines I underline will determine the goodness of the book (for me). And so, I now share with you to decide.
Here are the fabulous LINES in the book that captured me:
"Some things can only be seen in the shadows."
Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart.
A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.
...frilly words.
Nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds.
I bought the book on a whim. The title seemed suggestive.
That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely.
I wondered what on earth she saw in me that could make her want to befriend me, other than a pale reflection of herself, an echo of solitude and loss.
To truly hate is an art one learns with time.
His favorite language was money, the rest was neither here nor there.
"Age--the price we all must pay."
People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't complicated enough.
"Presents are made for the pleasure of who gives them, not for the merits of who receives them."
If you ever have a daughter--a blessing I wouldn't wish on anywone, because it's Murphy's Law that sooner or later she will break your heart--if you ever have a daughter, you'll begin without realizing it, to divide men into to camps: those you suspect are sleeping with her and those you don't.
"Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't have to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers."
Cinemas are full of lonely people, I thought. Like me.
Disamred, I realized how easily you can lose all animosity toward someone you've deemed your enemy as soon as that person stops behaving as such.
I slipped on my trademark angelic smile.
I can assure you without a shadow of doubt that the girl was no apparition. I could even describe her smell. Lavender, only sweeter. Like a little sugar bun just out of the oven.
Real women are won over bit by bit. It's all a question of psychology.
The female heats up like an iron. Slowly, over a low heat, like a tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her.
If you really want to possess a woman (or man), you must think like her (or him), and the first thing to do is win over her (his) soul. The rest...is a bonus.
If you want problems, you'll get them. Life isn't like novels, you know. In Life you have to take sides.
To go in pursuit of your dreams...
All I wish is for you to be happy...that everything you aspire to achieve may come true.
At the bottom of the cupboard, I kept an old tin cookie box, a treasure chest of sorts. There I stored a menagerie of useless bits of junk that I couldn't bring myself to throw away: watches, and fountain pens damaged beyond repair, old coins, marbles, wartime bullet cases I'd found in the park, and fading postcards.
...hit songs by the celebrated crooner Antonio Machin.
The leopard cannot change his spots.
If a fly finds its way into his shop, he'll open the door and windows wide so that the insect, one of God's creatures, is swept back by the draft into the ecosystem.
The trouble is, there are some low moments, and when those strike close to home everything looks blacker.
The only card I could play was to tell the truth.
He would stare at you without saying a word, and you wouldn't know what he was thinking, and so, like an idiot, you'd tell him things it would have been better to keep to yourself.
He gave the impression that he was one of those people who cannot be happy anywhere.
He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in people.
He was living in the past, lockied in his memories. He lived within himself, for his books and inside them--a comfortable prison of his own design.
Time is a great healer.
His soul is in his stories.
"We exist as long as somebody remembers us."
"Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever."
"Don't be offended, but sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger that to people one knows. Why is that?"
I shrugged, "Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are."
"And how do you see me?"
"Like a mystery."
At last I managed to retrace my steps within the tangle of corridors and tunnels until I entered a narrow passage that felt like a gangway stretching out into the gloom.
"You can see a mile off that she's worth a million bucks, but the crux of the matter is this:
is she the sort who makes one fall in love or the sort who merely stirs up the lower parts?"
In good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.
Only three or four things are worth living for; the rest is manure.
Love is a lot like pork: there's loin steak and there's bologna. Each has its own place and function.
Money is like any other virus: once it has rotted the soul of the person who houses it, it sets off in search of new blood. In this world a surname is less lasting than a sugared almond.
Like old cities, Barcelona is a sum of its ruins. The great glories so many people are proud of--palaces, factories, monuments, the emblems with which we identify--are nothing more than relics of an extinguished civilization.
Greed will corrupt us all in the end.
Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.
Few things are more deceptive than memories.
"The fragrances of the eternal feminine no longer overpowers me the way it mesmerizes you. At my age the flow of blood to the brain has precedence over that which flows to my loins."
"People who have no life always have to stick thier nose in the life of others."
"Life flies by, especially the bit that's worth living."
I imagined she was thinking that I was dying of curiosity and impatience, so I decided to adopt a nonchalant air, making it very clear that if she wanted to play mystery games with me, she had every chance of losing.
"I believe that nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their secret plan, even thought we don't understand it....It's all part of someting we cannot comprehend, something that owns us."
"And keep your dreams," said Miguel, "You never know when you might need them."
Some of us suffer from an excess of juvenile ardor and a lack of strategic grasp of the situation.
Death makes evryone feel sentimental. When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.
When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he's a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.
Never trust he who trusts everyone.
When you're eighteen, in the absence of subtlety and greater experience, an old bathroom can seem like paradise.
Have you ever covered a woman (or man) with oil, from head to toe, completely and meticulously?
Contrary to what you firmly believe, the earth does not revolve around the desires of your crotch. Other factors influence the evolution of mankind.
It is one thing to believe in women, and another to believe in what they say.
There are people you remember and people you dream of.
There was another silence, of the kind in which gray hairs seem to creep up on you.
I tried to conjure up the words I wanted to offer...but I was incapable of writing or feeling.
"We all do what we're best at."
"...what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets."
Time goes faster the more hallow it is. Lives with no meaning go straight past you, like trains that don't stop at your station.
A story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.
He was learning to see the world again through your eyes, to recover the boy he had once been.
So long as we are being remembered, we remain alive.
He's not a bad person. We all love in our own way.
We're all whores sooner or later.
All that remains in my memory is the touch of her lips...
I often catch her marooned in one of her silences, alone with herself.
She still sees her old music teacher whose symphony is still unfinished and who, it seems, has made a career as a gigolo among the ladies, where his bedroom acrobatics have earned him the nickname "The Magic Flute".
Father and son disappear into the crowd, their steps lost forever in the shadow of the wind.
Summary of The Shadow of the Wind
Make this your next book club selection and everyone saves.
Get 15% off when you order 5 or more of this title for your book club.
Simply enter the coupon code ZAFONSHADOW at checkout.
This offer does not apply to eBook purchases. This offer applies to only one downloadable audio per purchase.
The wildly popular gothic novel? now in a stunning new package
?A secret?s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept,? begins Carlos Ruiz Zafón?s astounding novel of postwar Barcelona. But more than four years after its initial paperback publication, the secret is out?the novel remains a favorite of booksellers and readers alike.
Get 15% off when you order 5 or more of this title for your book club.
Simply enter the coupon code ZAFONSHADOW at checkout.
This offer does not apply to eBook purchases. This offer applies to only one downloadable audio per purchase.
The wildly popular gothic novel? now in a stunning new package
?A secret?s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept,? begins Carlos Ruiz Zafón?s astounding novel of postwar Barcelona. But more than four years after its initial paperback publication, the secret is out?the novel remains a favorite of booksellers and readers alike.
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