Finished: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Marquez). Well, hmm. Another book I couldn't put down, but about which I have conflicted feelings. Truly, if there was a book that gives life to the quote "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. A man who never reads lives only once."....this would be such a book. The vivid imagery and spellbound way the reader is pulled into the generations of the Buendia family is undeniable. I was totally immersed in the town of Macondo. Are there any characters to be loved and cherished? Not by me. Most of them were flawed beyond repair by their predestined, I suppose, self-centeredness, and never rose above those usually fatal flaws. Perhaps just the original matriarch, Ursula, could be spared that description, but all of the male characters and most of the females evoked no enlightened loyalty from me that most great books inspire. Perhaps that's what kept me reading 'til the end...that hope that, finally, one of the newest generation would rise above the mistakes of past family members and actually be an unselfish, genuine person.

It truly was lovely writing, and I'm sure I'll be mulling over my feelings for awhile on it. I just really wanted to love at least one character! My favorite passage is very near the end of the book. If you're planning to read the book, then don't read the passage below. :-)

"Aureliano...skipped again to anticipate the predictions and ascertain the date and circumstances of his death. Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeateable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportuniy on earth."