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This is me, going on my travels very soon. I'm doing a lot of reading so that I am all ready to go to my book club when I get back. For our next meeting we are reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It's a somewhat gothic tale about a young man who lives and works in a used bookshop with his father in Barcelona. He is given his choice of any book from a warehouse called The Cemetary of Old Books, and is sucked into the mystery of the disappearance of his book's author. I'm not into it very far yet, but the book has elements of magical realism that would appeal to fans of Chocolat by Joanne Harris. The local Barcelona color is also very well done, and there are lots of strange and gutsy characters as in Harris' books. The writing is not bad too - lots of passages I feel like putting sticky notes on.

I have also just completed A Poisoned Season by Tasha Alexander. This is a mystery, Ms. Alexander's second, set in late Victorian London. A young wealthy widow, determined to be independent becomes embroiled in an international plot to restore the Bourbon heir to the throne of France. This is a great study of the social mores of the time, but it's not like Edith Wharton, more like Elizabeth Peters. The feisty heroine falls somewhere between Amelia Peabody and Anne Perry's Charlotte Pitt. This was a good story and fun too.

Now over to you... Leave me a comment about what you are currently reading or have on your "to be read" list.

Labels: Barcelona, book comments, booksellers, London, magical realism, Poisoned Season, Shadow of the Wind, Victorian