My trivial thinking

The Shadow of the Wind is a novel by the Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón, originally published in Spanish in 2001. It has since been translated into more than forty languages, published in over fifty countries, and, according to the author’s website, has sold more than twelve million copies worldwide. I read the English edition. In 1945, in post–Civil War Barcelona under Franco’s regime, ten‑year‑old Daniel Sempere is taken by his father to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books. There, Daniel is drawn to a novel titled The Shadow of the Wind and becomes fascinated by its mysterious author, Julián Carax. He reads the book quickly and is deeply moved. Daniel soon meets Clara, a beautiful twenty‑one‑year‑old blind woman who knows Carax’s works well, and he develops a romantic interest in her. One night, he encounters a faceless figure in the dark—Lain Coubert, the devil in Carax’s novel. The stranger offers Daniel a large sum of money for his copy of The Shadow of the Wind , intendin...

As I was listening to Emi Fujita’s songs on YouTube, I came across Eva Cassidy. Eva Cassidy is hardly known in Japan, and almost all of her CDs available here are imports. I had never heard her songs—or even her name—before. But her beautiful voice and remarkable musical sensitivity have the power to captivate listeners instantly. Eva Cassidy was born in Washington, D.C. in 1963 and grew up in Maryland. She had an interest in both art and music from childhood. When she was nine, her father began teaching her to play the guitar. At eleven, she joined a local band as a singer. In 1992, at the age of twenty‑nine, she released her first album, a duet album. Still, her name was known only in the Washington, D.C. area. In 1994, she was diagnosed with skin cancer. In 1996, Eva Cassidy passed away at the age of just thirty‑three. In 2000, the BBC broadcast her performance of Over the Rainbow , and it caused a sensation across Europe and eventually around the world. She became known as a legen...