Bad Glacier

Book 3: One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I liked this book a lot. I’m not big on buying books, but I’ll definitely get this one at some point.

There isn’t really a single protagonist; instead, the story follows the “life” of the city of Macondo and the Buendía family that founded it. Extraordinary, supernatural events are written about as if they were everyday occurrences, making the book feel like a tall tale or a story passed down from generation to generation. The main theme is, of course, solitude, but its variations allow the story to cover all sorts of emotions.

Ugh… I hate being so generic, but I don’t want to ruin the book for anyone reading this. It’s always seemed to me that book reviews are often written for people who have already read the book. They either give things away (I even dislike reading dust jackets–I like to go in blind, or as close to it as possible, when I’m reading), discuss things that won’t make sense until someone is halfway into the book, or are annoyingly vague.

I’m going with the third option, obviously. Anyways, if you haven’t read this book, check it out. Very good.

Book 4: Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Wanna guess the theme of this one? (Hint: it’s not fatal diarrhea)

After One Hundred Years of Solitude, this felt kinda weak. It was slow starting and, because of the smaller scope, felt much less epic. It got better as it went on, though, and I don’t regret reading it. The chapters were really long, though. I like to stop reading at a chapter break, so this annoyed me a lot.

Decent book. Just don’t read it after something amazing.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 11th, 2005 at 9:00 am and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.