The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I picked this book up on the recommendation of the owner of Prospero's Books, the very nice new bookstore in downtown Marshall.  Zafon is a Spanish writer (very well translated into English) who tells a story here about people obsessed with books and the stories in them.  The story veers into the implausible at times (numerous times), but the detail in the characters and the stories makes it worthwhile.  I was also particularly interested in how the book's setting (Barcelona, 1945-55-ish) in the wake of the Spanish Civil War affects it.  Oddly, World War II is almost completely absent from the book (Spain was neutral during it) but the experience of the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930's hangs over the whole story.  Some of the characters are as florid as some of those in Arturo Perez-Reverte's works, which makes me wonder whether this is a Spanish characteristic, or just characters commonly used in Spanish literature.  I might be wrong in my assumption that the characters are unique to Spanish literature, though - now that I think about it I suspect that you might find equally eccentric characters in Southern literature.
Overall I really enjoyed the book, as I do just about anything that assigns an unusual significance to books and writing, but it wasn't perfect - the bizarre twists did finally get a little old, so I ended up reading for style and out of an affection for the characters.  Sort of like enjoying the cinematography and acting in a movie where you've lost much interest in the plot.