The Book and the Beach.

Obligatory photos of the beach from today (taken by my new camera which I absolutely adore); when I arrived that flag was a “come and swim” green and by the time I left it was a “be careful because the waves are crazy” yellow. Also, in the second one, how tiny does that little kid look who is in total shadow? What a happy surprise when I looked at my photos when I came home!

Today I took a trip to the beach at Masnou as the skies were blue, it was a Saturday, and there seemed no better place to finish my page-turner of a novel that I was almost close to concluding. May I make a quick public service announcement to anyone who is looking for a new book to read and may or may not have ever been to Barcelona. This one is written by Barcelona-born author, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and called “Shadow of the Wind” which was first written in Spanish in 2001 (of course) and then translated into English three years later. It was recommended to ME by Sonja who had read it in Spanish, but it had been recommended to HER by someone who had read it in German (it´s been translated into 15 different languages). It was one of those books you don’t want to put down and in the last hundred pages, as you are nearing the end while turning each page faster than the last (because you are so curious as to what comes next), you also realize that the more you learn, the closer you will be to finishing it, and then what?! What happens when there is no more book to read? Well, the Mediterranean Sea watched me finish this book while the wind was whipping sand around at Masnou and I must say, it was incredible. I loved the characters, I loved the weaving that the author did between the characters and in and out of time periods, I loved knowing the places they were talking about in Barcelona though it was mainly set in the 1950s. I loved all of it and if you are looking for a book, may I suggest checking out the ‘Z’ section (for Zafón) in Barnes & Noble (or if you are English-speaking and in Barcelona, a little bookshop off of Las Ramblas that sells a few titles in English).