Cent'anni di solitudine | 
bailedI really wanted to like this book, especially because I have a pin on my jacket for it. But it was like when you wake up and try to remember your dream but it makes no sense but you write it all down anyway….yeah it was like that. Many thoughts that were jumbled together with just a few connections. I quit and didn‘t finish it. Book #107 in 2024
pickI've had this on my bookshelf for awhile. I missed a pub quiz question about it so I bumped it to the front and read it. What was I thinking? This book is a treat from start to finish. Exotic, magical, cryptic, and yet so raw and earthy about how we feel about each other. Through feast and famine, life and death, this story rampages forward like a child exploring a toy store. Unpredictable, with Bradbury-like attention to the artful details.
panThis was a hard one. I only read it because it was for my bookclub and I knew that there will be Tapas at the end of it 😋
I have to skip July in #camplitsy as I really should start with the tagged book for my irl bookclub. I have been putting it off for ages, even bought a copy in my new favourite edition but ugh, I have a hard time getting into it…
so-so10-3 April 24 (audiobook)
I read this years ago and enjoyed it, although I do recall being confused by the repetitive names. When it was in an audible sale, I thought it would be good to revisit but this really didn‘t work for me as an audiobook. It is too difficult to follow and the beauty of the prose is somewhat lost. Instead I was focused on the many incestuous relationships, some with characters who seemed far too young. Not a fair review.
This one has been on my shelf for a very long time. It‘s a beautiful edition. I read a bit slower in Spanish, but I‘m trying to read more in my mother tongue so I‘m learning to be patient with myself. I grew up bilingual, but after years living in cities where no one spoke Spanish, I‘m very rusty. I‘ve been getting better since my mother moved in with us and we have more Spanish speaking friends/neighbors where we live now. Excited for this one!
pickRomantic surrealism full of magic and brutality. In this book, fact and fiction, past and present, memories and dreams all become blurred and one. The family chronicles of the Buendías reminded me of how we all create and reproduce our own realties, or what Garcia Marquez calls worlds of solitude. A refreshing and unique book I adored reading, also because it comes from a non-western view.
pickA tough & long book, but worthwhile to stick with. I Can see wanting to read in Spanish as a down the road possibility.
so-soReading this for book club and we are all struggling. I‘ve done an awful lot of supplementary reading and I know all the academic analysis, but it hasn‘t really helped me to make sense of what the author is doing in this book. I don‘t dislike it. I‘m actually intrigued, but quite frustrated. 🤷♀️
pickI have postponed reading this one for so many years, if only I knew I wouldn't be able to put it down once I started it.
The story is overwhelming but so compelling, with beautiful prose soaked in magic realism; an imaginary family's saga spanning on more than a century in the fictional town of Macondo, where the ordinary blends with the extraordinary, and local myths mask true historical events, uncovering what is truly meaningful for humankind.
pickYou are a wanderer in a camp of other wanderers seated around a fire. A grizzled orator is telling a story of a family. Of a town, perhaps real, perhaps imagined. They seem to blend fact with fantasy, confuse dreams with memories. Parts of their story are hard to stomach, even frustrate you. Yet their story is so well told with such beautiful language and imagery that you cannot divert your attention. This is One Hundred Years of Solitude.
pickMy all time favorite. Have three differents editions. It was almost imposible for me to believe that a simple mortal could have created something like that
so-soThis is one of those books that a lot of people have talked about, so listened to the audiobook. It was an okay book not my favorite. I rated this book a 3 out of 5 stars.
pickI just love how quirky this story is. Nothing is too weird or wonderfiul.
#alphabetgame #letterO
Wonderful book that gets better each time I read it!
Oh, and thank you Misty for the lovely card! It was so nice getting some Litsy mail again! You are wonderful!💖
This is it, probably my absolute favorite book! The prose is absolutely beautiful and I loved the author‘s use of the magical realism style. All of that being said, this is not an easy read. There are so many characters with similar names, it‘s nearly impossible to keep them all straight. I was getting all flustered about this when I read the book and just decided I was going to relax and enjoy the writing and the story, which worked for me
Revisiting another favorite. This book is a masterpiece.
pickExcellent novel. The prose is magnificent, and wise, while I could feel the Faulkner influence in many sentences and passages. (While I know this is a fact, maybe it‘s also just me being kind of obsessed with that author.)
I‘m going to reread this—probably soonish—at which point I‘ll write another review, because I need to get my thoughts around this work. It gets dense and hard to follow and I found it easy to get lost, but I stuck with it.
I‘ve been gone on a vacation for three weeks—Greece—which was great but I naturally didn‘t get to read nearly as much as I hoped, I brought more books than I needed, books I didn‘t touch, because the whole thing was pure socializing basically…so this is why I haven‘t been posting on here. I went wild on Instagram though.
I am still working on this Márquez classic however, and have been really enjoying it. Just been reading a page here and there.
pickThis is my favorite of the Garcia Marquez books I‘ve read so far. I liked this family saga much more than Love in the Time of Cholera. The repetitive character names got confusing, so I referenced a family tree. #FoodAndLit #Colombia #ReadTheWorld #ReadingTheWorld #translated #1001books
Some farm jobs are more conducive to listening than others and after several days with little time to listen, I finished this #audiobook today. #BooksOnTheFarm
I‘d been uncertain about trying books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but now that I‘ve started I‘m apparently going to work my way right through his books on the #1001books list. I‘m starting my third one this year for this month‘s #Colombia book for #FoodAndLit.
This morning we put some hay in the barn and this afternoon we‘ll be baling more. I‘m listening to the #audiobook while working on odd jobs in between. #BooksOnTheFarm
Since the beginning of adolescence, when he had begun to be aware of his premonitions, he thought that death would be announced with a definite, unequivocal, irrevocable signal, but there were only a few hours left before he would die and the signal had not come.
#OnThisDay in 1967 One Hundred Years of Solitude was first published in Buenos Aires. Only The Bible has sold more copies in Spanish, and Marquez himself has admitted he likely would have never read his own book because he never read bestsellers. There is only one way Marquez would allow for a film adaptation: "We must film the entire book, but only release one chapter—two minutes long—each year, for 100 years." (100%
would watch) #HistoryGetsLIT
panI‘d tried to get through it years ago, but I wasn‘t able to. Finally finished it today and couldn‘t enjoy it. I‘m not a huge fan of magical realism but I love Saramago & Vargas Llosa so I really really wanted to like this.
The repetition really exhausted me, I only cared about two of the 100 characters and the style was too this-happened-then-this-happened. There were moments of pure beauty (the galleon, the butterflies) but they quickly passed.
Blending the everyday and the miraculous, the historical and fabulous, psychological realism and surreal flights of fancy, One Hundred Years of Solitude has influenced nearly every important novelist around the world.
Book that #BeginsWith #One Day 15: Photos are taken from our 2014 Gabriel Garcia Marquez tribute post when he passed away. More quotes can be found here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-7Ei
bailed@Readergrrl #ProfessionalBooknerdsChallenge #Day3
I've often felt the title of the novel would be the conditions under which I would be able to finish this book! Magical realism just does not do this for me, and this novel in particular!
so-soThis book is impressive, but certainly not for everyone. OYOS tells a fictional history of the Buendia family and the mythical town of Macondo, reading almost like a biblical parable. The reader is called to consider the cyclical nature of time and the inevitability of death, but with this message comes repetition and wordy paragraphs. If you‘re patient, there‘s a lot to digest from this story. If not, this might not be the book for you.
pickThe story follows the Buendia family over 100 hundred years in a town of Macondo which they have built. It describes the different members of the family through multiple generations and the repeated history of the characters. The stories are also full of magical realism.
I found the book a bit harder to get through due to the very similar names of the characters and the monotonic voice throughout. But I did enjoy it and may need to re-read it!
…the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them.
Perhaps, not only to attain her but also to conjure away her dangers, all that was needed was a feeling as primitive and as simple as that of love, but that was the only thing that did not occur to anyone.
Choosing to listen to the Audio book instead of reading might not have been the best idea. Why does everyone have the same name😂 other than not knowing exactl who is who this book is very different from what I expected but still quite enjoyable ☺️
Recommended by my Spanish teacher; reading in English version first. So far, I‘m enjoying it.
pickMy favorite book for grown-ups; it‘s creative, political, just the right amount of weird, and is pretty much the poster child for the magical realism genre.
pickFollows the tale of a family who set up town in Macondo.
Another classic down, many more to go. I enjoyed the book, the thing about listening to all the classics is that at times, it‘s hard to determine where one begins and the other ends.
His only happy moments, since that remote afternoon when his father had taken him to see ice, had taken place in his silver workshop where he passed the time putting little gold fishes together. He had had to start thirty-two wars and had had to violate all of his pacts with death and wallow like a hog in the dungheap of glory in order to discover the privileges of simplicity almost forty years late.
#SpringSentiments Day 5 @Eggs
This book has been recommended to me several times over the years, and I've attempted reading it, but never finished it. #Exasperation is all I feel for this book and its characters.
Maybe one day I'll try again.
Have had this on my shelf for ages - finally getting into it
pickWonderfull book! One of the best I've ever read. I cannot find my words to describe this book. It was like reading all the history of the whole world in one book. War, love, family, blessings and curses. It was like speaking with my great-great grandma.
