Book Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez, known as Gabriel García Márquez, is a master storyteller. He was born on March 6, 1927, in Aracataca, Colombia, the inspiration for the fictional place in his book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. He was a journalist, screenwriter, short-story writer, and novelist. Recognized for his literary genius and as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Marquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982 One Hundred Years of Solitude in which he popularized the use of magical realism that made Macondo and its people spellbinding. This put the Latin American literature on the world stage.

Marquez’s style of storytelling in this book was greatly influenced by her maternal grandfather and grandmother who introduced him to two different worlds of stories — factual and superstitious, real and magical. One Hundred Years of Solitude was his groundbreaking novel that sold millions and earned global recognition. He wrote seven books, including Love in the Time of Cholera, La hojarasca and Del amor y otros demonios.

Marquez died on April 17, 2014 in Mexico City, Mexico.

I was hesitant to write this book review for several reasons.

I am not an American.

I don’t live in California and I’ve never been there.

I was not born in the 60s.

And I am not a writing expert.

I am not in a position to comment on people, events, counterculture, and other prominent issues mentioned in the book nor criticize this book’s writing technicalities.

But I could share one thing for sure…

How this book made me feel while and after reading it.

The first time I heard about Joan Didion, I was watching a video lesson on writing. The coach showed her favorite books and one of the books was Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Curious, I took note of the author, and when her book, The White Album, was on Kindle Deals, being the frugal bookworm that I am, I grabbed the opportunity to buy it. In my mind I said, finally, I could read her after many months of waiting.😅

Going back to Joan Didion, I learned that she was an American writer and journalist who was one of the trailblazers of New Journalism characterized by using first-person narrative, immersive reporting, literary techniques, and subjectivity. She started her career in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine.

Throughout her career, her essays appeared in major magazines such as Esquire, The New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker.

Some of her major achievements were the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005 and being a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking.

She received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2013.

Book Description

Social media is tricky.

You don’t know if the information you read or the person sharing it is real.

Because appearances matter more than substance on social media platforms, we are not sure about the content's truthfulness. Is it authentic or manufactured?

Not only that. Aside from the content we consume, we also meet influencers who are sometimes over the top. Their lives can be exaggerated to grab people’s attention or promote a brand. The line between who they really are and who they want us to believe they are is difficult to tell.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn takes a closer look at these newfangled ways of getting information, connecting with people, and building communities through common social media conventions from the perspective of the influencers, their audience, and the outsiders in her book, Follow Me. Quinn added depth to the story by highlighting modern mothers’ challenges that make them hungry for comfort, support, and freedom.

Follow Me is a thriller with hints of dark humor, packed with dizzying truths about social media, the idiosyncrasies of the cultic-vibed mom-fluencer tribe, and flash-bang murder.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn is a novelist and screenwriter who lived in Los Angeles for fifteen years working behind the scenes and writing for television. Follow Me is her debut novel and Amazon MGM Studios acquired the exclusive rights to produce it as a feature film. Quinn earned her BA in English from UC Berkeley and has a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy. One of the things she loves to do is travel and enjoy nature with her family.

Book Description

What is a story?

Is it the character or the plot?

Is it the achievement of the character’s goals or the feelings of the readers about the character and the story?

Lisa Cron dives deeper into describing what a story is about in her book, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence. A story is not just about the characters, events, and the setting but it’s a brain simulation that prepares us to handle situations like those the character faces. Since the brain’s purpose is to keep us safe, it learns from stories the different ways of dealing with real-life circumstances.

Cron explains the importance of brain science in telling a story by citing studies and insights from prominent neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio, Marco Iacoboni, and Richard Restak. According to neuroscience, the brain follows certain rules when understanding the actions, thoughts, and motivations of the characters, the nuances of the story events, and the relevance of every story information. Writers need to understand these rules and use them to their advantage to hook and satisfy the readers.

Cron is also the author of Story Genius, another book that tackles brain science to help writers create engaging stories. Aside from writing, she also worked at W.W. Norton and Angela Rinaldi Literary Agency, as a story consultant for Warner Brothers and William Morris Agency, and teaches at UCLA Extension Writers' Program since 2006. She helps writers, nonprofits, and organizations use storytelling effectively to inspire action and real-world change.

Book Description

I wish I had done that.

I wish I hadn’t done that.

These lines are familiar, aren’t they?

They echo in our minds, resounding the regrets from the past – regrets about things that we didn’t do or things we wish we hadn’t done. They can bring us down and hold us back from living our lives.

What if we could return to those moments, make different choices to correct our mistakes, or grab missed opportunities?

Matt Haig explored this idea in his book, The Midnight Library, combined with the themes of existential crisis, depression, hope, acceptance, and courage. Following the story of Nora Seed who had limitless chances to relive her life, Haig courageously articulated the verities of mental health challenges and life itself. He invites the readers to see the beauty of life with its imperfections.

Haig wrote several books with similar themes of mental health, hope, and resilience including How to Stop Time, Reasons to Stay Alive, and The Comfort.

More than 10 million copies sold, The Midnight Library is The Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller.

Book Description

Happy New Year!

It's January 1, 2025 and it means it's time to set our reading goals.

Over the years, the way people read has changed, especially when the Internet came. Reading books is even more memorable and exciting when reading websites and apps appear. One of them is Goodreads, a social cataloging website. Millions of readers worldwide use Goodreads to record their books, annotations, quotes, and reviews. One of its features is the reading goals: every New Year when the clock strikes midnight on January 1st (Pacific Standard Time), you can set the number of books you want to read for the year.

My Reading Journey

I started reading books seriously in 2020 but it wasn't until 2021 that I began setting reading goals on Goodreads. In 2024, I am grateful that I reached my goal of 50 books; in fact, I read more than 50 books. What I like about setting goals in Goodreads is that I can adjust the number of books I want to read that year without pressure and judgment. I changed my 2024 reading goals several times within the year, from 50 to 30, then 40, until I reverted it to the original number, 50. For the past 4 years, I’ve been hitting 40-60 books per year and if you told me about this before 2021, I wouldn’t believe you.

I have loved reading books ever since I was a child and reading is like connecting with my inner child. I am so glad that I found my way to reading books voraciously again. But, reading 50 books and more can be challenging especially when the year ends in a few weeks, and the fear of not hitting my goal is bothersome. That's why, I am changing my strategy this year.

My 2025 Reading Goals and Strategies

This year, I will slow down in reading books to enjoy the stories or the ideas more, have more time to gather my thoughts, reflect more on the lessons I learned, and curate my book reviews.

Instead of 50 books, I aim for at least 25 books so as not to get pressured into hitting my reading goals by the end of the year. This is a great relief for me. However, I will still try to reach 50 books if I can.

One of the things that I'd also like to do is to get to know the author of the book I am reading. In this way, I can garner more insights about the topic or the story by knowing the author’s background, motivations, and any other interesting details. I think this will make my reading experiences more memorable and fun.

Why These Goals Matter

Reading is an important part of life because it connects me to my past and guides me to the future.

I grew up knowing that my grandmother had two big shelves of books in her living room. My siblings and I would grab any books even though we didn’t know how to read. We sometimes brought them home, just looked at the pictures, and even drew on the pages, something I feel guilty about now as I look back on it. I also started loving stories at the time. My uncles and cousins who were active church teachers would read Bible stories to us such as Jonah and the Whale, Noah’s Ark, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Books and stories are close to my heart. When I read, I am connected to my inner child who enjoys literary activities.

After I graduated from the university, got a job, and started a family, life became so hectic. Reading books was pushed down to the bottom of the list of things to do. Then, the pandemic happened in 2019 when my anxiety levels went through the roof and I needed something that would help me divert my attention from the things I couldn’t control. This was the reason why I went back to reading and dabbled in writing book reviews even though I was shrouded by doubts about how I could do it. Well, everything can be learned, can’t it? And I am not aiming for becoming an influencer–just a book lover and and risk taker. I learn a lot of things from books and I wanted to share my thoughts, hence, this blog. I also permitted myself to write badly and just be myself. In a natural progression of things, you get better when you keep doing one thing, and I could say, I write better now than before, and this is something that I am grateful for. There’s personal growth after four years of reading books and writing book reviews.

Setting my reading goals every year helps me reach my other goals which are staying connected to my inner child, gaining knowledge on how to manage my thoughts and myself to combat anxiety, and improving my reading and writing skills.

Staying Accountable and Realistic

Okay, now that I have set my goals, what would happen next? My response to this question is more of what I feel. I am a bit scared and doubtful.

My life is not all about reading books, sharing on social media about my reading experiences, and writing reviews, I also have my responsibilities at home and work. But I am thankful to my 2020 self because she started the habit of reading that I couldn’t easily shake off. My day feels incomplete and uncomfortable if I don’t read for at least 30 minutes. It’s a balancing act that needs a lot of practice, which I have been doing since 2020, so I believe I could push through the challenges and reach my goals.

This year, I will use two book cataloging apps, Goodreads and The StoryGraph. I am excited to try new things to enrich my reading life.

For me, reading is fun, cathartic, and life-saving. I learned a lot of lessons from fiction and nonfiction books that offer different perspectives on life that could guide me to know myself more and teach me how to live a better life. This is one of the benefits of having a reading life and this can be sustained by setting goals every year. It can be challenging for me to reach these goals but, remembering the other reasons why I am doing this, I can make this happen.