Candide Or Optimism by Voltaire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are two ways to rate and read Candide:

Rating for the plot: 3
Rating for the the satire it was: 5

I guess the best way to describe this book is calling it a fairytale for the adults. Through Candide and Pangloss's rose tinted glasses everything happens for the greater good and everything is really, truly fine.

However, through the misfortunes of Candide and his friends, Voltaire presents a brilliant satire on the world he saw around him and which, to quite an extent, we see even today.

Read Candide to understand the world around us. Don't go by the plot. Read between the lines.

And most importantly, read a good translation! I had two versions on me: the one I marked, which is absolutely brilliant besides being fabulously illustrated; the other was a Kindle edition, which literally murdered the story!

So, yes, read Candide! Don't go by the friend's reviews (if I had, I'd never have bought it!). If you're lucky, you will love it!

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Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The time has come when I start feeling differently about this book. No, I did not read it again. Quite the contrary. But suddenly the smell of bitter almonds that feels like unrequited love and the story of Florentino Ariza's undying love for Fermina Daza despite countless affairs with other women, (365 to be precise) makes some sense.

It takes a lot more than finishing this book to understand it completely. A painful tragedy is one. A real-life love story or merely "the idea of being in love with someone" is another. A desperate desire for something is the third. I don't know which one it was for me but a few things that finally became clear to me after three years are:
1. Love DOES feel like Cholera. You feel nauseous, feverish and even demented sometimes.

2. When you finally get what you've ALWAYS desired, you get the feeling that everything you did before this was unreal, useless and irrelevant. The past seems like a dream and only the present matters because the present is a dream that has come true.


3. No body makes more sense than Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, who is clearly a genius and it's a privilege to even be alive under the same skies as this man!





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No One Writes To The Colonel by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though certainly not the best book by Marquez , ' 'No One Writes to the Colonel' has a rare, bittersweet quality that only a book by Marquez can possess. In fact if I have to quote the man himself,I'd say, this book reminds me of 'the smell of bitter almonds'. In its subject matter and form it is very close to stories of O. Henry which have the quality of being sad and yet beautiful. To quite an extent, it also bears the mark of being the first few stories by a relatively new author for though, the story is essentially Marquezian, (or Gabrielian, for that matter) it wasn't the Marquez I see in 'One Hundred Years of Solitude or in'Of Love and other Demons'. Still, it is beautifully poignant and extremely touching and shall always stay close to my heart.

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Love in the Time of Rabies

Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I have never read something so beautiful and scary at the same time. 'Of Love and Other Demons' has to be the most beautiful and the scariest stories of all times! Read between the covers of my History book and finished within a day, 'Of Love and Other Demons' is a book, that,much like 'Wuthering Heights' fills the reader's heart with that rare bittersweet feeling that comes only after reading a devastatingly beautiful love story.



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Visiting Macondo with Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez

My tome-travelling couldn't have started with a better companion than Gabriel García Márquez and I really couldn't have visited a better place than Macondo.
Indeed, never had I expected to visit a place for one hundred years of solitude and for all the time that I stayed there as a guest, no matter what I did and where I went, Macondo kept me encased in its magical glass jar.

Enough of wannabe 'poetic' talk! Let's get down to the facts! I started reading 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' somewhere in September 2011 without ever imagining that by the time I'd finish it, I would have joined this incredibly idiosyncratic group on Goodreads which would compel me (though not against me wish!) to challenge myself to read 52 or more books by the end of 2012 based on 52 different countries of the world. I remember being so determined to finish this book within one month, I was almost as close to doing it as the forefinger from the thumb but as fate would have it, I stopped reading after finishing 300 pages and got engrossed in other books until, once again, Macondo called me back and for an instant I could relate myself to Melquíades, who kept returning to Macondo even after his death. Yes, Macondo was magical and the Buendías almost felt like the long lost cousins whose memories continue to come rushing back to you like waves on the sea shore.

Believe it or not, though I abandoned the book after reading half of it, the book never abandoned me. The story of the Buendías, despite the slow pace and annoying repetitions of names like José, Aureliano and Remedios, stayed fresh in my mind. To describe it in the words of Márquez, the story remained as dust-free and fresh in my head as the parchments of Melquíades despite the unlimited number books I had read between September to December.

With 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', I got a flavour of Colombian history and witnessed its wars, gallivanted about its streets, experienced its sultry summer and got wet in its raunchy rains. I even visited the seductively smutty houses of Petra Cotes and Pilar Tenara.

My experience with the book? Well, it wasn't much different from what it could have been had I really visited Colombia when its history was being created!

Perhaps because no other book could have started my tome-travelling better than this one, 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' actually chose being ignored by me till it was really time to read it, enjoy the experience and make it the first entry on this blog. It was almost like it wanted to be read when it would be marked somewhere forever!