Latest readings

The Horse and His Boy is the third book (in a chronological reading) in the Narnia series. I have been postponed reading this for so long, but when I began reading it, I couldn't stop reading and highlighting. I have about 10 pages of quotes from this book. It's not as good as the other two books in the series I've already read, but there are some insights that are very good. Clearly, Narnia is not just for children. I can't wait to read #4, Prince Caspian.

"Child", said the Lion, "I am telling you your story, not hers. No one is told any story but their own."

 

This book made me read on buses, in bus stations, in front of the company I work at while waiting for the gate to be opened in the morning, late into the night, way past my bed time. It met all the requirements of a book, requirements I didn't know I have! Mystery, abundance of it; history, but not over the top; the feeling of a Romantic/ Victorian novel (for some reason, I had the feeling I was reading of Dickens' London, not the Barcelona of the 40s); love stories, but not annoyingly imposed on the reader; such an easy to read, yet an elegant writing style/ translation (in my humble opinion); the details of the lives of so many characters and the connections between them - perfect for a curious reader who likes to know a lot about her characters. It's a book about books, a story within a story, and what could be better?

This book was an experience similar to Shapiro's The Art Forger.

I felt myself surrounded by millions of abandoned pages, by worlds and souls without an owner sinking in an ocean of darkness, while the world that throbbed outside the library seemed to be losing its memory, day after day, unknowingly, feeling all the wiser the more it forgot.

Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.  

-- from The Shadow of the Wind