Painfully delicious anticipation......

Do you remember that feeling you used to get as a kid when it was your birthday and you had a whole pile of unopened gifts stacked in front of you?  Each wrapped package a secret promise.  As long as the gifts remained wrapped, they had the potential to be almost anything in the world!  This was always the most exciting time for me; that brief moment when anything was still possible.  Oh!  I'm so lucky to be enjoying this feeling once again!

About a year ago, I read a wonderful book called The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  This book went straight to the top of my list of "The Ten Best Books I've Ever Read."  Zafon has such a gloriously mysterious way with words.  I hungrily devoured the first half of the book but by about midway through, I found myself forcing a slow down.  I didn't want the experience to end!  Zafon had created a dark, intriguing story line dripping with atmosphere and mystery and used words in ways that literally sometimes made my heart beat faster.  The book was that good. 

Immediately upon finishing the last page, I did an Internet search for anything else he might have written.  But alas, he is a Spanish author and I was not able to find anything else that had been translated into English.  Sigh....

Two weeks ago, I walked into Border's to pick up a CD of Bach cello suites.  Unless your own life is blessed/cursed with a similar passion, you can not begin to imagine the excitement that surged through me upon seeing a display for a new book by Zafon.  I raced over to the display, (pushing, to my shame, a young mother and her toddler out of my path; the Bach CD completely forgotten for the moment) and grabbed up the new book, The Angel's Game.

I felt light-headed as I turned it over to read the back cover.  Another novel, set in the back streets of Barcelona, written in the same Gothic style as the first and claiming to be a "riveting new masterpiece" filled with plot twists and mystery.  Oh Joy!  Oh Rapture! 

I've had the book home for two weeks now and have not read so much as the first word.  I haven't even opened the front cover.  I'm battling the urge to begin a journey that I know will end all too quickly.  As long as it remains unread, I have so much to look forward to: each new day holds a whisper of promise for something I can't quite define.  It's sitting on my coffee table and every time I catch a glimpse of it, my toes tingle and excitement fills the back of my throat like a fuzzy tennis ball.

I have decided to save it for my trip to Haiti next month.  I leave on July 19th and have literally begun to mark the days off on my calendar; not in anticipation of my trip to Haiti, but in anticipation of my trip through the dark, back alleys of Barcelona!!