{"id":1056,"date":"2005-03-14T10:22:23","date_gmt":"2005-03-14T10:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2005\/03\/the_shadow_of_t\/"},"modified":"2005-03-14T10:22:23","modified_gmt":"2005-03-14T10:22:23","slug":"the_shadow_of_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2005\/03\/the_shadow_of_t\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shadow Of The Wind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you happen to buy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0753819317\">The Shadow Of The Wind<\/a>, there is one really important thing to do before you start reading it &#8211; peel off the Richard &#038; Judy Bookclub sticker on the cover (You&#8217;ll probably also want to peel off the &#8216;3 for 2&#8217; sticker that will almost certainly also adorn the front of the book).<br \/>\nNow I wouldn&#8217;t want you to think that I&#8217;m a snob&#8230; Let&#8217;s start again. I&#8217;m a snob. And there&#8217;s no way that I&#8217;m reading this book on public transport with those people on the cover. Obviously this association is having a massive effect on the sales of a book that otherwise wouldn&#8217;t have entered the public consciousness in quite the same way, hence it&#8217;s riding high in the book charts. And then <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/radio4\/arts\/openbook\/\">Open Book<\/a> did a Spanish books <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/radio4\/arts\/openbook\/openbook_20050213.shtml\">special<\/a> &#8211; notably failing to include Arturo Perez-Reverte.<br \/>\nBut back to The Shadow Of The Wind. Its popularity owes something to the mystery aspects of The Da Vinci Code and the magical realism of the Latin-American writers. I liked it a lot &#8211; although it was a tad long, and I didn&#8217;t buy the overly detailed flashbacks when one character was telling another about things that happened in the past with the kind of detail that only a novellist can muster.<br \/>\nBut a thoroughly readable and enjoyable novel. Now I feel I must check out the rest of the authors from the aforementioned <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/radio4\/arts\/openbook\/openbook_20050213.shtml\">Open Book<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you happen to buy The Shadow Of The Wind, there is one really important thing to do before you start reading it &#8211; peel off the Richard &#038; Judy Bookclub sticker on the cover (You&#8217;ll probably also want to peel off the &#8216;3 for 2&#8217; sticker that will almost certainly also adorn the front [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}