From the Bookshelf of The Reading Challenge Group…

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez

Start date: May 1, 2015

Finish date: May 31, 2015

Discussion: Group Read Archive 2014-16

Why we're reading this: Classic Group Read - May 2015
[close] Classic Group Read - May 2015

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Group Read Archive 2014-16

Genre Group Read (Humour) - December 2016 - You Are Not So Smart
By Allison , Quest Hound · 11 posts · 30 views

last updated Dec 28, 2016 04:05PM

Alternate Group Read (Classics) - December 2016 - Mansfield Park
By Allison , Quest Hound · 5 posts · 18 views

last updated Dec 04, 2016 09:34AM

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What Members Thought

Feb 17, 2011 Elise rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books, good-enough-to-reread, book-club, pandemic-escape-reads

2017 review:
I just finished reading this, my favorite novel, a third time, and I love it even more, which I didn't think was even possible. If I had to live on deserted island alone for the rest of my days and could only take one book with me, One Hundred Years of Solitude would be my choice. Not only is Garcia Marquez's language gorgeous, but he surprises us with strange, rich, and beautiful details in almost every single sentence. I will never tire of reading this great book, and I suspect I 2017 review:
I just finished reading this, my favorite novel, a third time, and I love it even more, which I didn't think was even possible. If I had to live on deserted island alone for the rest of my days and could only take one book with me, One Hundred Years of Solitude would be my choice. Not only is Garcia Marquez's language gorgeous, but he surprises us with strange, rich, and beautiful details in almost every single sentence. I will never tire of reading this great book, and I suspect I will read it many times more in my lifetime. Yes, it's that good. It is a richly allusive epic tale about stories, about how history is written through a combination of truth, obfuscation, myth, and legend. It is world history in microcosm and Marquez is the 20th century's Homer (note allusions to The Odyssey in its pages as well). One Hundred Years of Solitude is the story of enchantment that pulls readers along with every line like Melquiades' ingots. For, how else could GG Marquez reveal so much horror and truth and keep us reading--humor and beauty, that's how. I love this book, this fanciful and faithful way of viewing the human condition, and I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez for weaving this gorgeous tapestry for us to lose ourselves in and for refusing to allow this masterpiece to be made into a movie because he respected his readers' imaginations too much and wasn't motivated by greed, as so many authors today are. Readers who complain about not being able to keep characters' names straight are both not paying attention to Marquez's character development (which erased most of that initial confusion for me) and are missing the point of this book entirely. Control is an illusion (one major theme in my opinion), so just get lost and enjoy the magic carpet ride a la Melquiades. To read this one any other way is to cheat yourself out of a sublime literary experience.

2014 review follows:
I reread this one twenty years after reading it the first time, and I was drawn in, enchanted, and blown away all over again by Garcia Marquez's gorgeous prose and dazzling setting and character development. After this rereading, I was reminded why "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is one of the pivotal works that changed my life. It transformed my view of the world, revealing the magic and the strange, deranged beauty beneath our often sad, ugly, and demented history, and that way of seeing in itself, buouys us up, gives hope and meaning to all of our strivings, regardless of the destructive legacies we sometimes inherit or bequeath. Macondo may be a world born of Garcia Marquez's imagination, but it is true to life, bursting with wisdom, passion, longing, and honesty. In my opinion, "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is the best novel ever written. Ever since Gabriel Garcia Marquez passed away last week, I have grieved for the loss of a great man, a literary genius, and what seems almost like a best friend, but most of all, with Gabo's passing, I grieve for a world that has lost a great deal of its magic and its soul. ...more

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Jul 14, 2011 Lucy Mason rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, historical-fiction, favourites

This is already going to be a biased review; magical realism is one of my favourite genres and I'm a massive sucker for historical fiction and genealogy. For me, this book was perfect. Set in the imaginary town Macondo and apparently based on the author's own home town, the rise and fall of the Buendia family who lived there is charted from their first arrival until the last member leaves sometime in the 20th century - the whole line condemned to one hundred years of solitude, misery, incest and ...more

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