One Hundred Years of Solitude

My favourite (fiction) book this year was One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. An amazingly intricate storyline with a perfect ending.

100 Years of Solitude is my favorite. I majored in Spanish literature in college, that was my first exposure to Gabriel García Márquez (I read it in the original Spanish, but I'm told the English translation is faithful and very good).

Does it have to be old to be a "classic"? If not, by far, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez is my favorite novel by a Nobel winner. It's great, epic, and lovely to read. If you include epics, Mahabharata is actually a grand, epic book with war, friendship, love, sex, politics, realpolitik, strategy, and has a reach story line with scores of great side-stories. I also genuinely enjoyed Iliad and Aenied. I was also surprised at how good Candide by Voltaire was to read. Had a ton of fun reading it.

These threads are posted a lot, but I still like reading the comments for new book recommendations if I see a match. Also, hopefully this can show people how great fiction is. I've seen comments that shun people for liking fiction compared to non. For me: Lonesome Dove 100 Years of Solitude Catch-22 The Sellout (very relevant again) East of Eden Kafka on the Shore (and all the stories in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman)

Ernst Jünger: Annäherungen. Drogen und Rausch (not transleted to english? I've read it in polish). Great piece of essay. The Art of War by Sun Tzu - bit sad 2 books by Greg Egan: Distress & Teranesia The Invention of Nature : Alexander Von Humboldt's New World DMT: The spirit molecule One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez (WOW) The book of dead philosophers by Simon Critchley (funny!) & some more (I have to start noting it down :P) Currently: The Systems View of the World by Ervin Laszlo

From where I stand, Hispanic and Slavic literature is fairly unknown and underrated on the other side of the pond. Ramón del Valle Inclán's "Lights of Bohemia": A great portrait of Madrid and the dirty guts of the Spain from 100 years ago, written in a gorgeously precise, dark and multifaceted range of vocabulary. Ortega y Gasset's "Rebellion of the Masses". It is centered in the individual "I am me and my circumstances" and its evolution since the enlightenment. Sapkowski's "Witcher". Look for a good translation, lots of Slavic mythology tidbits and wonderfully juicy curse words. Stanislaw Lem's "The Star Diaries". Nice if you like to fantasize about buying pieces for your spaceship in a shopping centre or think about chair-like aliens with 11 different sexes (in the book). Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A hundred years of solitude". The book is all about "realismo fantástico", joining the real and imaginary words in an unforgettable blend.

- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin - Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts - The Tao Te Ching - The Gateless Gate (Koun Yamada translation/editing) - The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World) by Neal Stephenson - The Invisibles by Grant Morrison - Incerto (Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Antifragile, The Bed of Procrustes) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Iron John by Robert Bly - Catch 22 by Joseph Heller - The Character of Physical Law by Richard P. Feynman - Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges - 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Pharmakon by Dale Pendell - The Butter Battle Book by Dr. Seuss - Greek Mythology by Edith Hamilton - The Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual by Gary Gygax et al - Introduction to Algorithms by Charles E. Leiserson, Clifford Stein, Ronald Rivest, and Thomas H. Cormen

Superintelligence - Nick Bostrom Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace 100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

100 Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

East of Eden is my favorite book I've read in the last several years. Beautiful end to end and very moral. If you've read it it's totally worth reading Journal of a Novel: a collection of letters Steinbeck wrote to his editor every day as he was writing East of Eden. It's a fascinating window into the mind of a master deliberately creating a masterpiece. Other favorites: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, In Our Time by Hemingway, The Magus by John Fowles, 100 years of solitude, Moby Dick (perhaps a precursor to all modern fantasy?) Stranger in a Strange Land, and Infinite Jest. I've also loved both of DFW's big essay collections: Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll never Do Again.

Catch 22 One Hundred Years of Solitude The Infinite Jest Cryptonomicon

This year I read again '100 years of solitude' (in spanish, of course) and I enjoyed every bit of it.

Most books by Hermann Hesse, really... Narziss&Goldmund changed my perspective on life. If you have anything artistic in you, it's a must-read. Steppenwolf, Siddharta and the Glass Bead Game are other must-reads. Gabriel Garcia Marques, One hundred years of solitude. Practically all of Jorge Luis Borges' short stories. Mind-bending. Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being. Michael Ende's Never Ending Story. Enjoy!

One Hundred Years of Solitude- The English translation is some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read. The story is amazing and its understanding of people is unlike any I've encountered before, but the writing alone gave me a completely new understanding of what literature should really be. It's been described as "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Garc%C3%ADa_M%C3%A1rque... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Garc%C3%ADa_M%C3%A1rquez#cite_note-46)