The Shadow of the Wind

Most of the books I read are suggested to me by family and friends.  I must admit that this is an excellent way to make sure one doesn't pick up a book that has you yawning half way through the first chapter.  With that said, I would like to recommend an amazing novel that was recommended to me by a great friend and co-worker alike, Dr. Aida Pavese.  The book is titled The Shadow of the Wind and was written by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  I have only good things to say about this masterpiece.  I hope some of you will read it, if you haven't already done so.  Here is the google books description:

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.