One Hundred Years of Solitude
It's always disappointing to dive into a classic, beloved book and discover that it is just not meant for you. I really wanted to like this book. I enjoy magical realism as a genre, and I remember liking what I read of Marquez in AP Spanish in high school. But this book was such a slog that I gave up after about 150 pages. There were a couple of cool things. At one point the entire town is struck by insomnia and slowly begins losing their memories. I enjoyed reading about that, but I wish it had gone on longer. Because the book covers seven generations (100 years), no one episode gets more than a few pages. Anything that was interesting was quickly over and I was left with characters that I didn't care much about. The characters were the biggest problem I had with this book. They were constantly getting in their own way. Creating misery for themselves like they were all suffering from the same stupid martyr complex. One woman falls deeply in love with a man. He eventually f...