The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I was leafing through my journal and saw this excerpt from Zafon's Spanish novel The Shadow of the Wind which I read over the summer. Aside from the fact that I think it speaks of how literature has influenced my life, it also reminded me of my goddess-sister who tagged me to come up with my own list of must-reads...something I hope to put together within the year...anyway, here is that lovely excerpt from page 6 of the novel which summarizes my personal thoughts and feelings about books...

"Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of those words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a place in our memory to 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. For me, those enchanted pages will always be the ones I found among the passageways of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books."