One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the best written books

GGM is the GOAT

I found the style of the book insanely difficult to read through. Like you said, the feeling of 300 years in just a few words, while charming it made it very hard for me. I go back to that book every few years and see if I can finally get the rythm going but I always struggle so I eventually give up. It’s a shame, I can definetely tell it’s a masterpiece

Did you read it in Spanish? I find it crazy how different the book feels when reading it in English vs Spanish. It’s hard to explain, but the logic behind his literary style just makes more sense in Spanish, and it flows better in Spanish as well. But I guess you can say this about any book that’s been translated from its original language.

I like to read it in the summer, outside, preferably when it’s very hot. Sets the mood, and the heat gives you a mild high/euphoria after a while and it sort of makes the magic real.

Upon reflection, ETA drink fluids while doing this and don’t do it right now cause heat wave and you’ll die. Just be careful everybody

Years ago I was blown away by Love in the Time of Cholera. Read One Hundred Years of Solitude recently and it solidified GGM as one of my favorite authors. Yes the plot is bizarre and meandering but his magical realism draws the reader in. His writing is beautiful, and I regret I don’t know Spanish to read it in the original.

One a side note, I’m having a baby in a few days and we are naming her Aurelia. It dawned on me a few weeks ago the connection to this book and all the Aurelianos! I found the Aurelianos a lot more interesting than the Arcadios for some reason.

I will admit it didn’t sit well with me. Just like murakami’s work i find these apsurdist fantasy really hard to read and follow. Since there are no rules, everything seems pointless. He had survived for decades tied to the tree -sure. She just ascended to the heavens – yeah, why not. I found that not to be to my liking.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez have a way with words that when you read it, you instantly knows that it is Gabriel Garcia Marquez who wrote it. Reading it doesn’t feel like reading, but it feels like listening to a story teller. A very good story teller.

I had to read it twice before actually being able to appreciate it but that’s just me being dumb so what I’m trying to say is YES !

A special shout-out should definitely go to [Gregory Rabassa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Rabassa) for his work translating the book into English.

Especially when lauding the *’insane finesse in writing’* or *’the way it’s written and everything is described’* of GGM .

While, the author obviously deserves the ice cream, nuts and syrup; i think the translator deserves at least maybe the cherry. That book could have been interpreted all sorts of wrong ways and it wasn’t.

One of my favourite novels of all time, easily. It’s such an incredible journey.

Erendira and her grandmother get their own novella in 1972, called The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother.
(La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y de su abuela desalmada)

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a28381/erendira-and-her-heartless-grandmother/

I had to read it for the first class in my Masters program, and I had the exact opposite reaction. I know a lot of people think it’s beautiful, and that’s cool. It just wasn’t for me.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life by Gerald Martin is also an amazing read. The impact that the publication of this book had on the literary world cannot be overstated. And to think he was so poor when he was writing the book in Paris that he was forced to dig through the trash at times to eat.

Man. It is hard to describe how much this book bored me.

Have u ever heard a book called as crime and punishment ?

One of my favorite books of all time.

> ″But what pained her most and enraged her most and made her most bitter was the fragrant and wormy guava grove of love that was dragging her toward death.

It’s a novel I think better appreciated if you understand the time in which it was written. To quote SparkNotes:

> Márquez’s novel reflects reality not as it is experienced by one observer, but as it is individually experienced by those with different backgrounds. These multiple perspectives are especially appropriate to the unique reality of Latin America—caught between modernity and pre-industrialization; torn by civil war, and ravaged by imperialism—where the experiences of people vary much more than they might in a more homogenous society. Magical realism conveys a reality that incorporates the magic that superstition and religion infuse into the world.

The book contains many subjects: family, love, obsession, hatred, betrayal, forgiveness, memory, nostalgia, and how the passage of time changes our perception and feelings of powerful events.

> “Úrsula, on the other hand, who had suffered through a process opposite to Amaranta’s, recalled Rebeca with a memory free of impurities, for the image of the pitiful child brought to the house with the bag containing her parents’ bones prevailed over the offense that had made her unworthy to be connected to the family tree any longer.”

Marquez uses magical realism as a narrative device to portray how horrific tragedies affect our memories and how people and society move forward from unfathomably violent events.

> For instance, in places like Márquez’s hometown, which witnessed a massacre much like that of the workers in Macondo, unthinkable horrors may be a common sight. Real life, then, begins to seem like a fantasy that is both terrifying and fascinating, and Márquez’s novel is an attempt to recreate and to capture that sense of real life.

It’s also a commentary on society and progress. Our understanding of history is linear. Progress moves forward, society advances along with our technology, and there’s an inherent comfort in the knowledge that our modern technology separates us from our pre-industrialized past.

But our human nature is the same, so we’re often caught in repeating cycles of self-destruction even with the lessons from the past [the ghosts] and the warnings in our future [the prophecies].

>In general, children grow up quickly, but when they are adults, time abandons them, leaving them to sit with their own nostalgia and bitterness for years on end. Time abandons Colonel Aureliano Buendia after the civil wars, and Jose Arcadio Segundo, both of them locked in Melquiades’ laboratory, refusing to join the living, moving world.

>In her later years when Ursula considers her family, time appears to be moving in a circle. New children turn out to be like their ancestors, only horribly exaggerated in some flaw or strength. Time is indeed moving in a circle in this book, but instead of expanding outward it is collapsing in on the Buendia family as their eventual demise draws closer. Marquez’s point is that time moves in circles and cycles, and people are not always progressing.

It’s really a novel about human history told through the Buendia family generations. There are many Biblical allegories — Macondo begins as a Garden of Eden. The sicknesses mirror the plagues of Egypt and the rains are the Biblical flood. Allegories to Greek and Latin American mythology also appear throughout the novel.

I’m starting to ramble now but for my last point, what makes it my favorite novels is each time I read it I find myself empathizing with a different concept. Age and life experience have a strong impact on how you feel towards each character. It’s not a novel with clearly defined hero’s and villains with a tightly woven plot.

The characters are morally ambiguous and make both good and bad choices throughout their lives. Some eventually regret their decisions and feel remorse for their selfish motivations — others dwell in resentment, bitterness, and hatred forever.

It’s a very profound novel and one that is better understood the more you know about the author and it’s themes. It’s not a “spoiler” type of book so if anyone is interested in reading it for the first time don’t hesitate to check out some literary analysis on its themes, it may provide a greater appreciation for what Marquez accomplished and provide some necessary context for certain events — particularly the magical realism elements.

I’m in the minority here, but I found this book kind of insufferable. I finished it and get the whole “we never learn from our history” motif, it’s importance to Magical Realism as a Genre, and how the way it plays with time was historically important to literature as a whole, but I just didn’t relate to anyone or anything in this book. The prose is great but not enough to save it for me. Sorry, just my personal opinion.

I would however like to plug Juan Rulfo’s masterpiece “Pedro Paramo” which was GGM’s inspiration for 100YOS. It’s probably my favorite book, and I think people who liked and disliked 100YOS will both enjoy it very much.

An absolute transporter of a novel. He did good.