Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.15432974]

I'll be honest I did not like this book. The beginning, some of the middle, and the end were pretty good, but the middle just drags on with repetitive characters and things just happen just to happen. A character needs to die even though I've been fleshing him out for ten pages? Fuck your investment he's just killed. During the middle I just read mindlessly because it seemed, as someone aptly put it, that the book is just a well done first draft. All bones.
However, some lines and characters are very good. The first generation, along with the Colonel, are some of my favorite characters, as well as Melquiades. Every other character just seemed repetitious, and I get that's the point, but I would've preferred he substituted original characters for depth instead of shallow copies of in depth characters. I feel like going the Tolstoy route (1000+ pages) was needed here. I also don't like veiled political analogies, so maybe it's a question of taste.


"He had returned from death, because he could not bear the solitude," is still peak lit in my mind, and some of the themes are VERY good, in fact the entire thematic energy is there, but it's soooo obvious and I've seen it done better. I wonder if he had fleshed out his themes through the fantasy aspects it would've been more subtle?

Nevertheless, i'm still gonna attempt Love in the Time of Cholera to see if he handles two main characters for an entire novel better than 10+ characters.

[Anonymous No.15432989]

The best part was the one with the underage prostitute who has to sleep with 100 men every night to repay her debts

[Anonymous No.15433042]

>>15432989
marquez wrote a separate story just about her: The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother

[Anonymous No.15433047]

>>15432974
>things just happen just to happen
why do you read if you hate literature so much

[Anonymous No.15433186]

>>15433047
I didn't explain it well but if that's the conclusion you're jumping to then that's your prerogative. What I mean is by "things happen just to happen" is that there's no buildup, no foreshadowing, no nothing. For instance, Santa Sofia is in the book for atleast 200 pages. Within two pages he exits her from the narrative. Things can happen just to happen in a work of literature, but they must happen organically. There's a reason I said it seems like a good first draft, but in a first draft things happening just to happen is how you would approach the story. Compare this to Tolstoy who'll spend pages upon pages before major things occur. Yeah it's fine if minor events just happen, but you can't just have main characters die on the spot or leave the narrative every other chapter and expect me to be invested.

[Anonymous No.15433408]

>>15432974
The characters are all essentially the same couple of archetypes, but born into different circumstances. Aureliano Segundo is the man Colonel Aureliano would have become had he married the indebted prostitute and never gone off to war. I agree that some of the later characters aren't as fleshed out as the first generation is, but that's just because they were written to expand upon what came before them.

[Anonymous No.15433527]

Love in the Time of Cholera is coomer literatue tier. Would not recommend

[Anonymous No.15433678]

>>15433408
thanks, i guess i didnt catch that

[Anonymous No.15433709]

>>15432974

Love in the Time of Cholera is great. I haven't read one hundred years of solitude, but I think that the characters were really well developed.

[s10241875 No.15433992]

>>15432974
>I'll be honest I did not like this book
same

[Anonymous No.15434090]

>>15432974
You people always think good books drag in the middle. NO! Your attention span is shit. You picked up speed toward the end because you feel you will get a sense of satisfaction from finishing. This book does not drag in the middle.