The 306 Greatest Books #65 - Love in the Time of Cholera

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This book can be found on the Norwegian, BBC, and My Book Lists.

Contrary to the bizarre title this is a very good book. The title just signifies the time period that takes place and is not a the basis of the story. The book is a love story with a girl whose father tries to get her married above her station and two men who both fall for the girl. The one man is about the same level as the girl and he falls head over heals for her while the other man is a very prominent doctor who is the supreme bachelor in the community. The story starts off with the woman and the doctor as an old married couple then flashes back to the beginning of the story. It then slowly moves through the lives of these three people advancing a little on one character then falling back again with another character's story. Marquez does this phenomenally so that you do not even realize that the story changes from one character's narrative to another. The story is rather riveting and it kept me worried throughout the story about all the characters. There is no clear "good guy" or "bad guy" so I found myself cheering for both of them, worried that something major would go wrong. I would definitely recommend this for anyone in a romantic mood. 

The 306 Greatest Books #64 - The Stranger

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Stranger by Albert Camus. This book can be found on the Norwegian and My Book Lists.

The Stranger is a very short and easy book to read, which I was able to finish in just a couple of hours. But that does not mean it cannot be a meaningful book. The story is written in the first person narrative about a man who is so self absorbed that he feels little or no emotion through everything that happens to him and does not realize most of his life is passing him by. The story starts with his mother's death, of which he never shows remorse for and becomes one of the reasons for his downfall in the end. Eventually, the main character is led to murder another man and his moral qualities, or lack there of, are his deciding factors. He eventually realizes his personal flaws but by then it is too late. The book is written in the "American" style that I so particularly enjoy. Short, crisp sentences that are easy to read and easy to understand. I am going to put this on my must read list because not only is it enjoyable, it also provides a pretty good life lesson.

The 306 Greatest Books #63 - The Origin of Species

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

I should preface this review with the fact that I am a paleontologist and I have been studying geology and paleontology for over 20 years. I came into reading The Origin of Species knowing full well that the text was written over 150 years ago and the science of paleontology and evolution has progressed at a lightening pace since then. That being said, I still was not sure what I was getting into when I read it. To quote my former evolutionary biology teacher "Don't read The Origin of Species unless you have to." This is a science textbook and that is how it reads. The science itself is severely out of date and the text is rather dull to boot. Since the science is not current, I recommend that someone reading this should have a basic scientific background so that they can understand where the science is questionable or not. The main problem I have with The Origin of Species is that instead of doing science experiments, Darwin typically takes observations and makes large leaps of logic to explain why his observations are the way they are. Granted this is a seminal and often interesting work of scientific history, but it is too much of a difficult read for me to recommend it.

The 306 Greatest Books #62 - The Woman in White

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. This book can be found on the Observer, BBC, and My Book Lists.

Of all of the books that I have read across these 100 greatest books lists, the genera that is by far one of the least represented is the mystery. Luckily we get an excellent taste of mystery in The Woman in White. The story focuses on a mysterious woman who recently escaped from an asylum. Through the story she crosses paths with the main character, Walter Hartright, and she ends up being intertwined with the plot of several different characters throughout the story despite not always being present in the story. Since this is a mystery I will not give away any of the more interesting plot points (potentially ruining it for people) but I will say that it is a love story and it all turns out well in the end. I recommended this book to anyone who wants to have a fun sit-down with a book, since it is very easy to read, flows naturally, and is enthralling from the get go. The climax seems to come a bit early, but even though the narrative slows down afterwards, it never stops. Overall it is very entertaining and a must read in my opinion.

The 306 Greatest Books #61 - Fathers and Sons

I am going back and posting all of my previous book reviews so that they are listed on my site in chronological order. The reviews are dated for the time when I read the book, hence the reason many of them will be listed for times before this website existed. 

The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is Fathers and Sons (AKA Fathers and Children) by Ivan Turgenev. This book can be found on the Sybervision Book List.

I have a tendency to like Russian literature a lot because, so far they have been all very easy to understand and read. This book was no exception, although it was a bit odd at times. The story is very well written and the language used is immaculate, however the plot seems to have lost meaning for me, especially around the end. It is about the interactions between a pair of friends, their families, and society as a whole. The older friend, Bazarov, is a nihilist (meaning he believes in nothing), and the younger is Arkady, his pupil. The plot evolves around how Arkady deals with his mentor's views and how his mentor comes to see those views over time himself. Meanwhile, all of this takes place during the time when the serfs were freed, causing conflicts that the main characters have to work around in order to maintain their principles. At the end of the story Arkady's plot ends where I felt it was going, but with Bazarov, I feel the author didn't know what to do with him so he just left him "high and dry". Overall, a good book, but not a "100 Greatest book of all time" book.