Books Books Books!

Day 1 of daily blog posts this week!

This week I'm challenging myself to write 7 blog posts consecutively in hopes of bring more substance to my blog, as well as push myself to stick to goals that may not be easy. (I'm also hoping to post hebdomadally starting from now but we'll see about that haha).

As many of you know, I read 24/7- especially when I'm supposed to be doing schoolwork. Several days ago I finished a book called Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

Protagonist Daniel lives in a finally-quiescent Barcelona that just escaped both WWII as well as a civil war. As a son of an antiquarian book dealer, he mingled with literature since he was no taller than the second shelf. At age 10 on a June morning, he woke up screaming that he could no longer remember his dead mother's face. At this, his father told him to get dressed, explaining that he had to show him something, even though it was 5am. "Night watchmen still lingered in the streets when we stepped out of the front door. The lamps along the Ramblas sketched an avenue of vapour that faded as the city began to awake." After a stern warning not to tell anyone about what he was about to see and a quick knock at the door of a large building on La Ramblas, the door opened to an austere man beckoning them inside. They entered, and Daniel was aghast at the sight: "A labyrinth of passageways and crammed bookshelves rose from base to pinnacle like a beehive woven with tunnels, steps, platforms, and bridges that presaged an immense library of seemingly impossible geometry." In the book, this place was known as the Cemetery of the Forgotten Books, for books that are no longer on the shelves in order to keep them alive. First of all, when reading this I immediately knew that was going to be my heaven, and I'm still looking for a place like this in real life. (If you know of one, let me know!)

The whole point of that preamble and this blog post was to express the idea that Daniels' father shares with him in the Cemetery: "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 it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows." The idea that a book is its own living, breathing being that enraptures readers' lives and adds their spirit to its own is one that I will believe in forever. I completely agree with the idea that a book could be someone's best friend.

Books have the ability to transport you and your mental awareness into a completely new world. In Shadow of the Wind, I was able to travel to 1945 Barcelona. In Jane Eyre, I lived through 19th century England. In Kane and Abel I lived through almost 6 decades of both American and Polish history; (totally recommend that one, by the way). And in War and Peace I was taken to Russia 1812. It sounds very preternatural now that I'm reading this over but there is nothing that I believe more.

There's one more aspect of books from Shadow of the Wind that I'd like to talk about. As Daniel leaves the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, he describes the experience of finding the book. "Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book the 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 accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a place in our memory 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."

This is something else that, since I've read, I haven't been able to get out of my head. Finding that special book, the one that will forever be tolling like a bell through your head, is magical- and I know if you aren't an avid reader you may not understand the sensation, but if you are you know exactly what I'm talking about. We all have that book, the one that we can recite almost perfectly and will always be at the top of the list for recommendations, that book will always be in our lives.

Anyways, that's it for today, hopefully this gamble of thoughts somehow made sense.

PS: I most definitely recommend Shadow of the Wind as your next read! It is what I believe to be the pinnacle of a modern reminiscent gothic novel and was described as a "love letter to literature" that will take you on a ride of mystery, romance, murder and many existential crises!

Love, Isabela :)