One Hundred Years of Solitude

I essentially read this book because it's on every list of Books One Should Read Before They Die, and it sounded far more interesting than many of the extremely old 'canon' pieces of yonder years that inevitably take up prominent spots on such lists.
..
well, it was certainly not in the 18th Century style, but that didn't mean it wasn't a bit drawn out, halting and muddled.
To be honest I think the main issue was the characters were flippant within the story, passing in and out at random, unfixed in time on occasion, and confusing not only chronology, but relations and generations. This was not helped by the fact that every male in the novel of the Buendía family has (essentially) on of two names, either Aureliano or (Jose) Arcadio. it's a bit confusing. Granted, I see the significance of this odd narrative, and of the repeat of names, as history was seen to be circling back on itself, patterns in generations repeating and overlapping and confusing one another. In this way, the novel was brilliantly successful in mirroring life in narrative. However, it didn't make it particularly comprehensive, and I often found myself less engaged than I would have liked to be.

At it's core, 100 years of Solitude is a recounting of the history of one family- occasionally with meaningful, heartfelt stories, sometimes in minute detail, but often illuminating love and solitude, and the partnership that these feelings often share. The novel to me became the recounting of the latest 'ursula' or 'remedies' or 'aureliano' (yes many of the daughters were named after mothers or grandmothers as well), who they slept with - often wildly inappropriately, or out of sheer solitude, any resulting children, and a spiral into quiet sad solitude. This pattern, repeated again and again, had the markers of deep life lessons, but also became somewhat tedious for the reader.

in essence, I appreciated the novel, but I did not, in the end, find it overly engaging, moving or 'entertaining'. Rather it was dirty, real, unpolished poetry, which at times lagged, and at time showed glimpses of both the purity, and dark twisted animalisms that form the basis of humanity.