Love in the Time of Cholera

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1. SubGeniusJun 2022
   - A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul: explores themes of belonging, ownership, home, independence, escape, freedom.

   - Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: explores love in it's many forms.

   - Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: about love, the absurdity of life, beginnings and ends.

   - Miles by Miles Davis, Quincy Troupe: about jazz and the life of it's greatest creator.

   - Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson: ramblings of a pope.

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2. jackschultzDec 2018
   Almost a day late, but I'll throw this in here if people come by later looking for more suggestions.

   From this year, I read all but two of the Haruki Murakami books and all short stories. I love his writing style (great translations), and the fact that the stories are about not all the time realness. Kafka on the Shore is a great starting book. Also Norwegian Wood is another example, though this strayed away from the magical aspect I like of his.

   Another from this year was The Dubliners, collection of short stories from James Joyce. I was stuck in Dublin during a snow storm this past spring, so I'm sure this lead me to like the stories more, but I swear they're amazing and I haven't found anything else like them. They're all tiny points in people's lives, and the things that happen make differences for the people or are also easy to remember and not forget. Get one with reference notes in the back too.

   Besides those, Love in the Time of Cholera was another one way up on my list. Similar to One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I think I prefer slightly more, but reading both is interesting to read since Cholera was written 20 years after Solitude and we can see how the author changed over time.

   Overall though, my absolute top tier books are East of Eden, Catch-22, and My Struggle (Knausgaard). 1000% read those. I like including these so if somebody reads this and likes these books as well, they can somewhat trust my other suggestions.

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3. simonsarrisApr 2014
   Oh my. A paragon of magical realism and my second favorite author. Rest in peace.

   Liking storytelling alone is sometimes not enough to like Marquez, you have to love language too. He uses (some might say abuses) language to impact his storytelling, often using incredibly long, convoluted sentences to weave his narrative. It can be hard to follow, sometimes intentionally, but I find it enormously satisfying to read and follow along with his brain. Like slowly drinking a maple syrup of words.

   One of the best examples is the first 15 or so[1] pages of Autumn of the Patriarch[2], where the narrator winds this thread of what has happened slowly, using sentences that span pages, until you realize a shift from what has happened to a sort of what is about to happen. Then a fist slams on the table and the realization strikes you that the first part of the description was a kind of set up, this beautiful ruse. I wish I could be more descriptive but it would give away the delight. It's a great book about terror and despotism.

   Marquez is not the kind of thing you can read in a noisy environment. At least I can't. I adore him so much. I could write a eulogy for days.

   If you've never read him, please take a moment to read one of my favorite short stories, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

   http://simonsarris.com/lit/a-very-old-man-with-enormous-wing...

   (I've hosted a copy of it (and many more short stories) for ages because most of the copies on the web are plagued with ads and miserable formatting)

   If One Hundred Years of Solitude seems too long for you, I urge you to look into some of his very excellent shorter books, such as Autumn but also Of Love and Other Demons[3] and Love in the Time of Cholera.[4]

   (Chronicle of a Death Foretold is even shorter, but I do not recommend it as the first Marquez book you read!)

   [1] It could be the first 10 or 30 pages, it's been several years, but I am certain it's one of the better (and shorter) examples of his style.

   [2] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060882867

   [3] http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400034922

   [4] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307389731

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4. kartikkumarApr 2014
   A deeply thoughtful literary great, to rank among the likes of Dickens, Cervantes and Dostoyevsky in my mind. Love in the Time of Cholera changed me, just like Crime and Punishment did. It affected me more than any other book has. At the time of my life when I read it, I felt that it spoke to my personal sensibilities. I followed that up with Memories of My Melancholy Whores, which I honestly think is his absolute masterpiece.

   Gracias Señor García Márquez.

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5. MyrmornisApr 2014
   The spanish department at Princeton was kind enough to let me take a Spanish class while a visiting post-doc. It was great for learning Spanish. But it was so, so painful to see the sorts of pretentious bullshit that the undergraduates were inspired to produce by reading pieces by Marquez, and other South American authors writing in the "magical realist" style. I remember enjoying "Love in the Time of Cholera", and I am sure Marquez himself was great, but in general that sort of crap is exactly what you don't want your children wasting their time studying at university, and potentially misdirecting their professional lives thereafter through an underapprecation of the fact that there is aesthetic beauty in actual real stuff and facts about how the world really works.
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6. HeyLaughingBoyApr 2014
   By the end of the first page of Love in the Time of Cholera I was already wondering how amazing the book must be in its original Spanish and how much could be lost in translation.

   One Hundred Years of Solitude made me decide to improve my Spanish so I could read it in the orginal language. Still haven't yet :-(

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