false 320 154 <I>"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."</I><br><br> It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of <I>One Hundred Years of Solitude</I>, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics: <blockquote> A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.<br><br> "Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted. </blockquote><br><br> The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then <I>One Hundred Years of Solitude</I> does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house." <br><br> With <I>One Hundred Years of Solitude</I> Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-century literature. <I>--Alix Wilber</I> 3295655 book 1967 Cien años de soledad total:86285|5:39768|4:23186|3:13346|2:5750|1:4234| 86285 347362 131879 5503 1 45 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 02 15:25:14 -0800 2008 Fri Mar 28 13:00:54 -0700 2008 Love in the Time of Cholera. Unfortunately, I just think it is unbelievably boring with a jagged plot that seems interminable. Sure, the language is interesting and the first line is the stuff of U...more...]]> 2 39 false false Sat Oct 04 09:00:10 -0700 2008 Sat Oct 04 14:03:04 -0700 2008 thundercats in which a few of the cats were trapped in some kind of superbubble thing -- and it hit me that, being cartoons, the characters could just be erased and re-drawn outside the bub...more...]]> 3 37 false false Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Fri Feb 08 03:55:06 -0800 2008 Sat Feb 09 04:23:14 -0800 2008 Huh? Wha.... Oh. Oh, man. Wow.

I had the weirdest dream.

There was this little town, right? And everybody had, like, the same two names. And there was this guy who lived under a tree and a lady who ate dirt and some other guy who just made little gold fishes all the time. And s...more...]]> 5 21 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Tue Jul 17 01:13:00 -0700 2007 Wed Jul 25 18:37:54 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 16 false false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Feb 16 10:20:36 -0800 2008 Mon Jul 14 06:38:36 -0700 2008 One Hundred Years of Solitude is a great novel. How did this happen? One Hundred Years of Solitude is not a great novel. In fact, I'm not even ...more...]]> 5 18 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Jul 12 19:14:38 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 28 02:20:26 -0700 2009 2
People often complain about it: how the magical realism is jarring, how there is not enough character development, how the plot doesn't make any sense and how it is impossible to keep track of all the events, not to mention the characters, most of whom ...more...]]> 5 18 false false Wed Nov 14 07:59:51 -0800 2007 Wed Nov 14 07:59:51 -0800 2007 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a tremendous piece of literature. It's not an easy read. You're not going to turn its pages like you would the latest John Grisham novel, or The DaVinci Code. You have to read each page, soaking up every word, immersing yourself in the im...more...]]> 1 12 false true Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 24 09:45:02 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 16 12:24:31 -0800 2008 more...]]> 1 12 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1991 Wed Jun 11 10:49:43 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 11 10:50:38 -0700 2008 Ulysses for fun, which just goes to show that you should never take book advice from...more...]]> 0 10 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Apr 01 08:36:35 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 06 05:36:39 -0700 2008
I didn't enjoy it; I wanted it to be a fulfilling and rewarding read; I want it to be everything that everyone else said it was and then some.

So, I learned that some works aren't worth it--no...more...]]> 3 7 false false Fri May 02 11:05:11 -0700 2008 Fri May 02 11:29:43 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 8 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Sun Aug 19 08:09:00 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 23 18:39:34 -0700 2007
If it helps, by the time ...more...]]> 3 5 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Fri Aug 31 00:14:47 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 31 00:32:10 -0700 2007
To me this book was a long, rambling, chronicle of a family. Aaand... thats pretty much it. The story seemed like it was being made up as it went along, I didn't re...more...]]> 5 5 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed May 30 06:01:38 -0700 2007 Thu Jun 07 19:38:02 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 5 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sun May 06 01:29:08 -0700 2007 Wed Jun 06 08:46:26 -0700 2007 One Hundred Years of Solitude is the story of the rise and fall of the Buendia family and their village Macondo. It tells the tender truths and lies of a family from t...more...]]> 4 5 false false Thu Sep 20 21:46:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 20 21:49:10 -0700 2007
It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and ma...more...]]> 4 8 false false Sun Mar 15 21:11:13 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 15 21:15:45 -0700 2009
Most critics don't realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends; an...more...]]> 5 6 false false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Dec 31 07:50:21 -0800 2007 Wed Jul 23 00:45:09 -0700 2008 Just like 'Love in Time of Cholera', another superb blend of imagination, realism, and honesty.

I finished the book with renewed sense of the nature of love, of loving, of human nature, of being honest.

The writing is far from tedious (for a serious litrary work) , it is ...more...]]> 1 4 false false Thu May 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 20 17:13:04 -0700 2008 Fri May 22 08:16:57 -0700 2009 A virtuosic bamboozle, this...
A cold jag with no heart or soul, told from an omniscient distance. He did this and that, and she did this and that, and they did this and that. No inner heart, no longing, no sense of people, of desire, of inner worlds and struggles. Just...more...]]> 5 3 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat May 03 13:51:32 -0700 2008 Sat Sep 27 21:15:22 -0700 2008
At the forehead I said, "Father."

I was standing on the side of the highway when the explosions began. To the south, in the distance I assumed to be Sacramento, enormous poppings and boom...more...]]>