Inkheart's Spell

I don't really read fantasy, I only watch them. Don't ask me why :P Anyway, I gave Inkheart a try only because a friend of mine told me it'll be out in the movies next year. (I have this weird thing about reading the book first before the movie. If I happened to watch the movie before the book, I'd end up not reading the book. Ever. Even if the movie was good. Like Harry Potter and LOTR :P Again, don't ask me why.)

Anyway, this book is simply about a little girl, named Meggie, who had a dad, Mortimer, a bookbinder, who could read characters out of a book, when he read aloud. (Read: make the characters come to live, literally.) He happened to have read Inkheart to his wife one night, and all the malevolent, evil characters came out of it and into our world; while his wife, entered the Inkworld. After successfully chasing the villians away, he tried reading his wife back into our world, but with no success. After 9 years running away from Capricorn (the most feared character in Inkheart), Mortimer was finally found. Thus, the adventure begins.

The story unfolds with many unexpected twists, every time luring you deeper into the story. Each character was so well developed that you begin to imagine them coming to live in your own world.

There are other quite interesting characters in this book besides Meggie and Mortimer. My favourites are, Meggie's aunt, Elinor, and the fire-eater, Dustfinger. They both have quite a sarcastic sense of humour. Dark, dry, and funny. And both of them were never fond of each other...until maybe later :)

This book is specially dedicated to all book lovers like me :) Coz besides narrating the adventure, almost every other detail in there, relates to being a book lover - it talks about how valuable a book is to a reader because in it, it holds a whole new world, waiting to come alive in our minds. And how much one goes to great extent to care for a book - proper binding, no dog ears, no folded pages, no "bitten" off edges, no lines drawn, no scribbles, carefully kept in racks, and how much each book means to people like us. (Which is why I could relate to Elinor! haha She had a house of books!!!)

I intended to write a few of my favourite paragraphs in here. But due to the fact that I flipped the pages too quickly I wasn't able to write them down, and the fact that I NEVER SCRIBBLED ANY OF MY BOOKS, I now have nothing to "quote" from :( But nevermind...let me end with my favourite "opening" paragraphs from one of the chapters...

'"What do these children do without story books?" Naftali asked.

And Reb Zebulun replied: "They have to make do. Storybooks aren't bread. You can live without them."

"I couldn't live without them," Naftali said.' (page 18)