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The last two weeks have been Gabriel García Márquez weeks for me.
One Hundred Years of Solitude:
This follows seven generations of a family, from the founding of a remote village through civil war and capitalist exploitation through to its final destruction. Solitude is definitely a theme, but not as major of one as I had expected. I found the fairy-tale-esque presentation made it a bit hard to engage with. The content was fun and interesting, but most of it was only the barest of outlines. That allowed a lot more stuff could happen, certainly, and no doubt that sense of floating untethered over history was intentional. I just didn't entirely enjoy the experience. That said, though, if I ever found a town, I might have to call it Macondo.
Love in the Time of Cholera:
This was very different in style, with far fewer characters, allowing them to be explored in depth. The underlying plot of someone nursing a hopeless love for half a century is kind of meh. (And as seen while doing my normal post-read Wikipedia research, of course this was Ted from How I Met Your Mother's favorite book. Of fucking course it was.) Luckily the characters and setting are interesting enough to make up for that. It even managed to stick the landing, which is impressive given the premise.
Cholera was not actually a very prominent aspect of the book, for the record.
One Hundred Years of Solitude:
This follows seven generations of a family, from the founding of a remote village through civil war and capitalist exploitation through to its final destruction. Solitude is definitely a theme, but not as major of one as I had expected. I found the fairy-tale-esque presentation made it a bit hard to engage with. The content was fun and interesting, but most of it was only the barest of outlines. That allowed a lot more stuff could happen, certainly, and no doubt that sense of floating untethered over history was intentional. I just didn't entirely enjoy the experience. That said, though, if I ever found a town, I might have to call it Macondo.
Love in the Time of Cholera:
This was very different in style, with far fewer characters, allowing them to be explored in depth. The underlying plot of someone nursing a hopeless love for half a century is kind of meh. (And as seen while doing my normal post-read Wikipedia research, of course this was Ted from How I Met Your Mother's favorite book. Of fucking course it was.) Luckily the characters and setting are interesting enough to make up for that. It even managed to stick the landing, which is impressive given the premise.
Cholera was not actually a very prominent aspect of the book, for the record.