I did it! After years and years of checking it out and returning it unread, I finished One Hundred Years of Solitude. I just had to build and maintain momentum.
Why so difficult? As I read and loved the first thirty pages and GGM's style, I wondered why I never seemed to be able to get past them in other years. Maybe it's because I'm so plot-oriented. While this book has distinct through-lines (or cycles), it's not about any single character's overarching goal. Another thing: I might not have survived the reading were it not for the family tree in the front.
I'm excited to discuss the OHYS in more depth if anyone else reads it.
I also finished The Hunger Games and Mortal Engines, both of which fed my double love of post-apocalyptic dystopian fiction and young adult literature. I can't wait to track down the rest of both series with my hyper-attuned senses, metallic exoskeleton, glowing green eyes, and once-human brain. (Stalker reference!)
But first, to book club books. Home, then Sound and Fury.
Is it that bad? Maybe I don't want to read it after all...
ReplyDeleteAlso, Hunger Games gets steadily worse through the books. Although that's really just my opinion. I think that once it shifts to real life stuff, instead of being just about the Games, it's not nearly as interesting.
I heard their making a movie of it already. Does not make me happy.
So, who do you want her to end up with? Peeta or Gale?
-Heather
OHYOS isn't bad at all, it's just epic. It's a phenomenal book and I'm glad I read it. I normally have this furious reading pace--devour books on a daily basis--and GGM defies all that. He doesn't make it easy to breeze through his work, and he makes it very rewarding to linger. You must read it, or you will never meet the invisible surgeons.
ReplyDeleteAs for Hunger Games, I just snapped up the second book yesterday afternoon and actually preferred it to the first most of the way through, because I love politics. But the rescue at the end (the term would be deus ex machina)--and the revelation about the thirteenth district--was unrewarding. I love that there's a thirteenth district, but I feel cheated at not being included in the discovery of it. It would have been far better to have Katniss trek in there herself.
Team Peeta or Team Gale? Hmmm....I'm afraid one of them has to die. Either that, or the mayor's daughter is going to become more important in the next book and she will be the consolation prize. If I had to choose, I'd say Peeta for the sole reason that so far, he's gotten more time on the page than Gale. What team were you on at the end of Book 2?
Okay, so they both lived.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm satisfied with the outcome. Again in this third book, most of the real political action happens off-screen, outside and beyond Katniss.
I do like that in this YA series, revolution doesn't necessarily bring a perfect society and the victors suffer from realistic PTSD even as they carefully build a new life. There's no glorification of war here, and Katniss is almost immobilized by her questions about violence and justice.
Yeah, one girl I was talking to said that the author wanted the books to be about how war is bad, without a glorious ending, etc.
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it, I think part of the reason I didn't like it was also because of the whole Katniss not being in the middle of everything bit. And then at the end she just goes home, even with the talk of continuing the Games... Maybe because she doesn't turn out to be as powerful as we're used to heroines being?
The actual Games are my favorite part of the books (except for the end of the second one)- I think because it's a lot of strategy and crazy inventions. Also because Kat is so strong in them. Although we find out that she's totally been played in the second.