Run, Don't Walk!


100 Years of Solitude...heard of it? It is a Nobel Prize Winner, has been honored around the world as one of the best pieces of literature ever written, sold over 20 million copies, and, hello... it was an Oprah book club selection. The selling point for me was a quote on the back of the book by the New York Times review, "One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race."

Enough said.

It has taken me a while to read this 450 page book (though I have read much, much longer) because it was consuming and hard. My rule was to read 3-5 pages and then literally stop and reread them all over again. I had to do this otherwise I did not realize someone had just died or we were talking about a turtle and not a person or we were talking about a family member from the first generation, not the fifth, or the person talking was really a ghost, or that the red light district meant dirty things were going down. It was hard reading.

Also, I did not cry.

And I'm a crier. I've spent a long time trying to tell people I'm not...but you know the scene with Meg Ryan and Rosie O'Donnell in Sleepless in Seattle where they are talking about the commercial with the grandpa and the big red bow (and if you know the movie you just faked cried as you read the last three words, because the two of them start crying right there and get all choked up), that's me, I cry at commercials. I cry at seeing old people eating alone in restaurants even though Ryan says the men are just tired of their wives and trying to get away. I cry when someone loses the primary and they really wanted to win or when a sports team, the underdogs, like Todd Collins and the Redskins, are eliminated from the playoffs. I cry anytime any one else is crying because crying is contagious. I cry because I am happy, sad, mad, confused, constipated, scared, laughing too hard, you name it...I have alligator tears for basically every human condition possible.

My poor dad. He had 3 girls and a wife and we pretty much started crying in the sixth grade and haven't stopped.

SO back to the book. I did not cry. It was the most insanely, beautiful, fast paced masterpiece of a story I've ever read. It was too fast paced to cry. It was too real and at the same moment too farcical and baffling for tears. It was just mesmerizing and the more I keep thinking about different parts of it, the more I realize it might have been the best thing I've ever read, and now I'm crying.

So, if you love written words, a brilliant storyteller, and the power of literature to capture the raw essence of humanity...start this book today. Run, don't walk, and pick up your copy.

I've always wanted to say that. Could anything really be important enough that you would tell people as part of your advertisement to RUN and not walk??? That presents some huge safety concerns in my opinion, both with shopping carts, people who are running with children, excess weight, or oxygen tanks, and people who are fighting others out for parking because they are in race mode. And it really seems to be an embellishment of the product, I have never run into any store out of desperation for a product. Have you? Put on my Nike's and windsuit and run out to the middle of the car lot screaming... I"M HEEEEERE, I RAAAAAN, I DIDN'T WALK!!! Like they're going to come put a ribbon around your neck and let you pay your money to buy the best product in the world? This suggestion in awful.

My suggestion? Just take a leisure drive to your nearest Barnes and Noble or Borders and gracefully pick up a copy without making a scene about it.

100 Hundred Years of Solitude: a masterpiece!