Hello!
My name is Molly, and I used to run a book review blog with my friend Tiffany, but we have recently, and amicably, split ways, so I’ve decided to start a new review blog on my own, and review each one of the books on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, which I’ve already started with a count of 31 books. I’ve already reviewed each of these, so there will be a massive posting of all those reviews soon.Read More »
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman
“All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera.” Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Basic Plot Summary: Florentino and Fermina were in love when they were young, but then Fermina marries Dr. Urbino. Florentino is convinced that their love is true (or at least his love for her is true) and commits his life to waiting for Dr. Urbino to die so that they can finally be together. In the meantime, he builds his business career and has affairs with hundreds of women.
The book begins with the last day of Dr. Urbino’s life. We then travel back to when Florentino first lays eyes on Fermina and their brief and simple love affair. We then steadily move forward in time to how Fermina and Dr. Urbino came to meet and marry, how Florentine bided his time until he could be with Fermina again, and then we come back to after Dr. Urbino has died and Florentino has approached Fermina again.
My Reaction: You guys have no idea how excited I was to read this book. I read Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude in high school and fell in love with it, so I had high hopes for Love in the Time of Cholera. From the summary on the back of the book (similar to the plot summary above) I had a very different expectation on what some of the relationships would be like in the book, but I wasn’t disappointed that I was wrong. The way the relationships were written gave the characters more depth and made their interactions more complicated and fraught with emotion.
I felt like it also was an accurate representation of a lot of relationships between young lovers, which surprised me a little. I expected the relationship between young Fermina and young Florentino to be represented much differently in the book, though I’m glad it was written how it was. It showed an intensity, but a rather immature intensity and showed how easily broken they are. It was also interesting to read about the marriage between Fermina and Dr. Urbino, because it represented a different type of relationship between a man and a woman; perhaps less traditional (or maybe more traditional in the time period in which the story is set), but not unhealthy. Mutually beneficial and not necessarily loveless.
The relationship that surprised me most of all was that of Fermina and Florentino after Dr. Urbino died. At first it was exactly what I expected it to be, but then, because of who Florentino is as a person, the relationship started changing. IT wasn’t necessarily a bad direction, just one that I didn’t expect, and I’m not sure I like it better than what I was expecting, as I did with their relationship when they were both young. Part of me feels like Fermina wouldn’t have changed her stance on her feelings towards Florentino, but I also dont’ know what it’s like to be a widower in that time and place and how it would feel to be alone after decades and decades of marriage.
Overall, I definitely give it a 10/10 and can’t wait to read the last book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez on my list. In my opinion he is a brilliant author who weaves complex and wonderful stories.
Read on!
Molly
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
“And still nowanights and by nights of yore do all bold floras of the field to their shyfaun lovers say only: Cull me ere I wilt to thee!: and, but a little later: Pluck me whilst I blush!” Finnegans Wake, James Joyce.
So, in all honesty, I have absolutely no idea what on Earth I just read. There may have been some paragraphs in which I had a vague understanding of what might have been going on, but as a whole the book just went straight over my head. I borrowed the book from my library, so I only had three weeks to read it (and it took the whole three weeks to get through it), but I’d like to buy the book some day when I have more free time to read it slower and be able to annotate it. Read More »
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
“I remember the rules, rules that were never spelled out but that every woman knew: Don’t open your door to a stranger, even if he says he is the police. Make him slide his ID under the door. Don’t stop on the road to help a motorist pretending to be in trouble. Keep the locks on and keep going. If anyone whistles, don’t turn to look. Don’t go into a Laundromat, by yourself, at night.” The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
I’d heard good things about this book before I read it. I bought it on my Kindle app several months ago because it was on sale for $2 because I knew it was unlikely I’d get it for that cheap anywhere else, or if I waited. For a long time I kind of forgot that I had it on my Kindle app. So I finally got around to reading it and wondered if maybe I just wasn’t going to like it as much as everyone else seemed to. Read More »
Complicity by Iain Banks
“You could climb up onto them and sit on the rusting iron grid – afraid it would give way but afraid to admit you were afraid – and look down into that utter blackness, and sometimes catch the cold, dead scent of the abandoned gunned, rising up around you like some remorseless chilly breath.” Complicity, Iain Banks.
When browsing my local library with the titles of 32 books on the list of 1001 in my hand, I came across this one and thought, as more of a mystery novel, it would be a good change of pace from the general fiction books I seem to be reading a lot of lately. The book gives you two points of view. We start off the book with the mystery murderer in Second Person POV, and then each chapter get a little section from him as we see him murder (or occasionally just assault) yet another person he believes has done wrong. For most of the book, though, we follow Cameron Colley, a journalist who has been receiving tips from a mysterious Mr. Archer about some suspicious suicides and a conspiracy plot. Read More »
The Plague by Albert Camus
“You must picture the consternation of our little town, hitherto so tranquil and now, out of the blue, shaken to its core, like a quite healthy man who all of a sudden feels his temperature shot up and the blood seething like wildfire in his veins.” The Plague, Albert Camus
This book follows the town of Oran on the north coast of Africa through a plague that refuses to leave for seemingly unending months. It starts with the rats of the town all coming out and dying of the plague, and it seems like few people really take interest in what this might mean until the people of the town start getting sick and dying within 48 hours. Read More »
Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
“I notice that I can see my Father’s penthouse in Century City from this room and I get paranoid and start to wonder if my father can see me.” Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
Clay comes home from his university in New Hampshire for a month home during winter break. It’s set sometime before cell phones, while MTV still played music and movies were on videocassette and people used Walkman’s. It actually took me a while to realize that they didn’t have cell phones, and I had to keep reminding myself of that fact. There were a couple times in the book where one of the characters would tell someone else they didn’t have a friend’s number, and I kept thinking ‘Well why isn’t it in your Contacts list?’ There’s drugs and sex and parties and prostitution. If you’ve read Catcher in the Rye and didn’t like it, then I don’t recommend you read this book. Clay is reminiscent of Holden, and the writing style is very similar.
Besides the similarities to Catcher in the Rye, I thought it was a good representation of how it feels to those who go a long way to college to come home during their breaks. He seems disinterested in everything that’s going on at home with his old friends, and his old girlfriend. Actually, Clay was really disinterested in everything. He didn’t even seem to be that interested in the drugs he bought from his dealer, or the people he had sex with. Sometimes I got so tired of Clay’s disinterest in everything that I just couldn’t read it anymore and had to put the book down for a while. None of the interactions he had with his friends seemed to be meaningful at all. The dialogue was never really deep conversations. A lot of “What have you been up to?” “Nothing.” “Are you going back up to school?” “Probably.”
Speaking of sex, all of the guys in the story seem to be indifferent to the gender of their sexual partners. It’s not that I have anything against that, I just found it weird that all the guys were sleeping with other guys casually and still dating girls. I have no idea if the drugs would make them less inclined to care about the gender of their sexual partners, but felt it wasn’t realistic that all of the guys in that group would swing both ways. They were all also so very casual about sex. (Also there’s an underage rape scene… sort of. So if that is a trigger for you, I recommend you stay away.)
The parents also didn’t seem to care much what their children were doing. Clay talked about his drug use in front of his parents a few times in the book and didn’t seem to care that they heard, and they didn’t seem to react to it at all. It just seemed like a strange scenario to me.
Overall, I’d probably give it a 7/10. The writing style was well done and fit with the character and the scenario, but I felt like the character wasn’t connecting with anyone else in the book, which made it difficult for me to connect with him.
Read on!
Molly
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
“Then his head started to become a little unclear and he thought, is he bringing me in or am I bringing him in? If I were towing him behind there would be no question. Nor if the fish were in the skiff, with all dignity gone, there would be no question either. But they were sailing together lashed side by side and the old man thought, let him bring me in if it pleases him. I am only better than him through trickery and he meant me no harm.” The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest HemingwayRead More »
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
“It is not necessary that artists always occupy a decadent and enclosed world. My conscience, Sensei, tells me I cannot remain forever an artist of the floating world.” An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro
I was expecting this book to be of a similar style to the only other book I’ve read by Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, but it wasn’t. It’s not that I don’t understand that writers can write more than one genre, but the title of this book had me thinking that this one might also be written in some alternate world to ours. That isn’t the case, but I still enjoyed An Artist of the Floating World.Read More »
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
“See you’ll b’lief in a mil’yun diff’rent b’liefin’s if you reck’n jus’ one of ’em may aid you.” Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
Going into this book, all I knew was that it had been made into a movie with Tom Hanks in it with the vague idea that it was set sometime in the future. However, when I started reading and found it set in the 1850s, I was confused and made my way to Goodreads to see what I was in for. Read More »
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
“The snow had ceased, but it caked the ground deeply now and the sleek ground car advanced through the deserted streets with lumbering effort.”
-Foundation, Isaac Asimov
This was one of the books from my library haul a few days ago. This is the only book of the series that’s on my list of books to read, and I’m a little disappointed about that, because it was really good and the ending wasn’t the kind of ending where things are at least temporarily resolved, but the kind where it just kind of ends, and some events are resolved, but the bigger picture isn’t. But in this series, the bigger picture isn’t going to be resolved for quite a few books, I imagine. I wish the library had the rest of the books in the series, but if I remember correctly, they only had this one.Read More »
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