32. Gabriel García Márquez - Love in the Time of Cholera

I apologise because it has taken me forever to finish last week's book by Gabriel García Márquez. The reason for that is simple, I had to travel to London to take part in training because I have received a promotion in Edinburgh. I will live here for a month, but I promise I will keep finishing the blogs. However, I can't promise they will be on time... 

This week's novel was Love in the Time of Cholera and like the previous book I read by Márquez I wasn't charmed by it. This time, however, I understood the story and the meaning of the book. The plot basically is that a young boy (Florentino Ariza) and girl (Fermina Daza) fall hopelessly in love with each other. Fermina then falls out of love just as quickly as a girl is typically said to change her mind. Florentino, however, will never be able to let her go. He declares that his love for her equals any disease, in particular the disease that goes around Colombia when this story takes place, namely: "(...) to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera." (Márquez 62).

Florentino then goes on to a life of succubus, or as he puts it: "The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not." (Márquez 183) He always keeps his sights on Fermina though, in the hope that one day her rich and successful husband Dr. Juvenal Urbino will die and that she will fall back in love with him, which he does at the beginning of the story. It seems to be a perfect romantic love story. The feeling I get from it though is that Márquez has taken it too seriously and he described all the events that follow their meeting in the beginning of their long lives in too much detail. I think this will be a common problem I have with Márquez, I simply do not seem to like the lengthy way he presents his story and characters. 

The thing that shocked me most, however, is the thing I will leave you with. The last affair 70-something Florentino has is with a 14-year-old girl. Let's see if this does not trouble your mind because this is how he describes making love to her: 

"She was no longer the little girl, the newcomer, whom he had undressed, one article of clothing at a time, with little baby games: first these little shoes for the little baby bear, then this little chemise for the little puppy dog, next these little flowered panties for the little bunny rabbit, and a little kiss on her papa's delicious little dickey-bird." (Márquez 295)

31. Roald Dahl - The Twits

Another Roald Dahl classic this week. The Twits reminded me more of Roald Dahl's style than any of his other books I've read so far. The descriptions he gives of Mr. and Mrs. Twit are absolutely revolting and the things they do to each other, such as feeding each other worms and putting a glass eye in each other's beer, are unbearably disgusting.

This to me, however, is what made Dahl famous. The ending is so disconcerting, yet he is a famous children book writer. Children adore his books, but I can't help thinking about how The Twits shrunk into themselves. That most have been such a painful experience and such a slow and tormenting process. I felt the same way about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well, although I haven't read it yet. Children must be so good at distancing themselves from the story that they find these events funny, but I find it appalling. I can imagine that his books make good grown up horror films though, why as no one picked that up yet? Maybe I should....  

30. Laura Hillenbrand - Seabiscuit: The True Story of Three Men and One Racehorse

"Somewhere in the high country that once was Ridgewood, the tree lives on, watching over the bones of Howard's beloved Seabiscuit." (Hillenbrand 399)

Throughout Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit tears were streaming down my face. I never thought horse racing interested me so much. I never really came across it anyway, apart from the time I put bets on in the Grand National. This book taught me a lot about the technical side of the sports though and a lot about the passion that accompanies it.

It may sound a bit sappy and the book really isn't that emotional, but I just can't help myself when I read a book about animals. And this one is really well-written. Hillenbrand seems to know exactly how to describe a race to make sure no one can put the book down. You probably know the story about Seabiscuit. A horse no one wanted because he seemed to be lame, until he was under the care of trainer Smith and owner Howard. He turned into an American sensation, especially with Red Pollard in the saddle. It's impossible to understand how these two went through so many injuries, yet ending up legends in American horse racing.

I don't think anyone can say anything bad about this story. Please read the book though. I know most of you have watched the film with Tobey Maguire in 2003, it's still worth reading Hillenbrand's version of the story. Please do because I think everyone will be moved by this incredible tale.

29. Jonathan Kellerman - Self-Defence

I am back to reading a crime novel again. A genre that will keep my mind off of the fact I don't understand classic literature anymore. I did not even pick this book myself, because I won it at work (I love a job where you can get books as a reward, it makes me work harder). Despite all that, Jonathan Kellerman's Self-Defence is highly entertaining.

Apparently, he has a whole series of Alex Delaware novels. Delaware is a child psychologist who occasionally works for the LAPD and I just happened to read a book right in the middle of his career. It was written in 1995, which makes it the ninth book about Delaware. I didn't feel that mattered though. I could immediately understand the important details of the main characters and, luckily, in crime novels the whole plot starts at the start of the novel because they are not often continued into the next book. 

This one is about a girl Lucy Lowell who suffers from a recurrent nightmare after she stands jury for a trial against a horrible murderer. Together with Dr. Delaware she discovers these horrible dreams might be actual visions and scraps from her childhood. While Alex tries to unravel what this girl has seen in her childhood he gets deeper and deeper entangled in the Lowell's messy family history.

It's a mesmerising story and one of those books you really cannot put down because you want to know whodunit. At the beginning I was quite annoyed by the short sentence structures such as:

"She arrived five minutes late and apologizing. Smiling." (Kellerman 16)

And

"She introduced him as her brother, Peter, and he said, 'Nice to meet you' in a low, sleepy voice. We shook. (Kellerman 16)  

I think I was just affected temporarily by Dumas' intrinsic literary writing style and after reading him Kellerman is a bit of an amateur but a highly entertaining one at that.