100 Readers of Solitude

source

The first time I read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, I was mesmerized. I stumbled at first when trying to tell the characters' similar names apart, but each one was so colorful that I found even stumbling through the names, constantly referring back to the family tree in the front of the book, irresistible. Márquez had a way of exploring humanity with his words. He captured love, failures, struggles, beauty, and ugliness, and he wove it into magic.

I found out about an event in my area called "100 Readers of Solitude." It was an event at which 100 volunteers would read from Márquez's pages in a tribute to his life and body of work. I decided to go on a day that rained in torrents. One of the readers quoted a passage about rain, saying "The air was so damp that fish could have come in through the doors and swum out the windows, floating through the atmosphere in the rooms." My favorite reading was about Remedios the Beauty, the character who makes men go mad (literally), pays no attention to "manners" or other norms for females, sews herself a cassock, shaves her head, and ascends into heaven. I myself even got up to read. I left my book and had no idea what I was doing, but I got on the small stage and let fate decide which passage I should read out of a stranger's copy. I think it turned out pretty well.

from the reading (source)

I am currently making my way through Love in the Time of Cholera, and I have a challenge for those of you who have either never read Márquez or who need an excuse to read more (I know, why would you ever need an excuse?). I want One Hundred readers to pledge to read something written by Gabriel García Márquez. It can be a novel or a short story. Now, I know that I do not have even 100 followers, but I am still hoping to get 100 pledges (even if they're silent pledges and I never hear from you). Even if I can't quite make that number, I know it was worth the effort to get even one new reader to honor this author.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Please tell me of your experiences reading Márquez.