What There Was On the Other Side of Things

I needed a break in the Lord of the Rings reading train, and normally I wouldn't allow switching books while right in the middle of one, but I just couldn't get through book number three.  So, the other night I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I read it in high school for an out-of-class book report assignment, meaning that I didn't have to analyze it to death and ruin the book forevermore (i.e. Lord of the Flies, Heart of Darkness, Wuthering Heights, etc.).  I read it on my own terms, at my own speed, wrote the paper on a topic of my choosing, and that was it.  There was only one book in my entire reading-for-class career that I actually enjoyed: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.  It's a strange read, and very different from every other classic in the high school canon, which is probably why I liked it.  Anyway, back to One Hundred Years.  I'm only thirty pages in and have already found several great lines and passages, like this one:  "The whole structure seemed to occupy its own space, one of solitude and oblivion, protected from the vices of time and the habits of the birds."

(photo by e.hunt)