Rating: 
Summary: Laborious worthwhile read
Review: This book weaves non fiction and fiction with folktale confidence. Many of my impressions after reading the book are like those I had after seeing the movie "Whale Rider". The characters have little character but still there is intense emotion generated in this book from the narrative which is sometimes a very long tangent or dangling participle. If you want a page turner this is not a book you'll enjoy. If you enjoy prose and interesting writing styles and period literature then this IS a book for you. This series of stories revolving around a family mansion will not be for everyone but if you challenge the way you think and be open mined you might come away with jewels of thought-provoking moments.
Rating: 
Summary: I am shocked at the number of negative reviews
Review: (...) This is a beautifully written book that manages, as successfully as any other book has, to capture the enormous wealth and breadth of the human experience -- from one family (and one town)'s point of view. No book could ever encompass the entire human experience; but this book does a hell of a job, beginning with the founding of Macondo to its eventual obliteration(guess how many years later). One reviewer states that reading the book feels like reading Genesis from the Bible, and I think that's about right.To those of you who dislike/have trouble with "magical realism," just relax. Yes, you'll have problems if you think literally but what are books for? What is fiction for? Fiction is MADE UP. Good grief. Pretend you're at a movie, suspend your disbelief and get into the beautiful writing and wit and humor. It's a difficult book at times and the fact that everyone has similar names is very annoying, but what rewarding book isn't challenging? After you read the book, find Marquez's short stories, some of which are about Macondo and flesh out some things that the book leaves out (e.g. Big Mama's Funeral Carnival). I don't like or watch Oprah, and her choosing of this book is a little disturbing because now she's plowing into the territory of books I not only can't sneer at but absolutely love. Well, I suppose it had to happen sometime.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest book ever written by a Latin American author
Review: First, a foreward:
I was initially struck by the difference in reviewer opinions between those who read the "oprah" edition, and those who reviewed the regular edition. The Operah edition contains a much higher percentage of 1 and 2 star reviews, with the most common complaints being "confusing" and "depressing." Then I realized what it is: one review begins "I usually love anything our girl Oprah says to love." You see, most great literature actually requires you to think (gasp!); it's not there to boost your self-esteem, and it most likely will not end with a million hearts wrapped inside a teddy bear holding a bouquet of understanding in one hand and an undying torch of reassurance in the other so that you can feel like everything is perfect in the world. If your mental faculties have become so atrophied from reality tv show exposure that you cannot think for yourself and need a talk show host to tell you how to live your life, then you may want to avoid this book. But enough of my arrogant, pseudo-intellectual rant, now for a little about the book: There is a legend Gabriel Garcia Marquez likes to tell about the writing of his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. He claims that he wrote the book barricaded in his study in Mexico, after receiving a vision. One day, while he and his wife and children were in their car driving to Acapulco, he saw that he "had to tell [his] story the way his grandmother used to tell hers, and that [he] was to start from that afternoon in which a father took his child to discover ice." He made an abrupt U-turn on the highway, the car never made it to Acapulco, and he locked himself in his study. Fifteen months later, he emerged with the manuscript, only to meet his wife holding a stack of bills. They traded papers, and she put the manuscript in the mail to his publisher. Like everything Marquez writes, there is some truth and much fiction in this tale. The truth in the tale is that One Hundred Years of Solitude is a very personal book for the author. It would not have been written if he had not experienced the childhood he had. Marquez grew up with his maternal grandparents in Aracataca, Colombia. His grandparents were cousins who moved to Aracataca from Riohacha at the end of the War of a Thousand Days (1899-1902), a few years before a leafstorm. Marquez's childhood anecdotes tell of a big house full of ghosts, conversations in code, and relatives who could foretell their own deaths. It was also a house filled with guests and social events, shaded by almond trees and bursting with flowers. When Marquez's grandfather died, Marquez was sent to live with his parents. In his grandfather's absence, his grandmother, who was blind, could no longer keep up the house. It fell into a state of ruin, and red ants destroyed the trees and flowers. Also early in his childhood, Marquez witnessed the massacre of striking banana workers (workers at a plantation named Macondo) at a train station. The government made every attempt to block information from the public and pacify the foreign plantation owners. Marquez was horrified, and even more horrified when he reached high school and learned that the event had been deleted from his history textbook.
Careful readers of One Hundred Years of Solitude will recognize many of these elements in the book; there is no doubt that if Marquez had not grown up in Aracataca and had a keen ear, the novel would not exist. On one hand, the context for the book is Marquez's own personal nostalgia- for childhood, for his grandparents, for a big house filled with ghosts and laughter. On the other hand, the context for the book is Marquez's political beliefs and the oft-brutal realities of growing up in a particularly tumultuous developing country. Growing up in Colombia, which has a long and tragic socioeconomic history, Marquez learned about politics and economics early on. In his conversations with other Latin American writers he developed his own theoretical views about writing and politics. He often claims "The first duty of a writer is to write well"(implying that writing must not be polemical) but there is no doubt that the economic history of Latin America, which is a history of inequality and exploitation, has had a crucial impact on all of his writing. Marquez's approach to writing One Hundred Years of Solitude- combining his own memories and imagination with focused aesthetics and an eye for the tragic history of his country- has had an immeasurable impact on writers of color worldwide. Coming at the time it did, in the midst of a boom in Latin American writing, it was immediately recognized as one of the finest, if not the finest, offerings from that period. More importantly, it crossed every boundary to becoming an international bestseller and worldwide phenomenon. Even Latin American writers who found fault with it could not deny that it had directed the attentions of the literary world to Latin America.
In much of the world, the unimaginably old coexists with the unbearably new. For writers conscious of straddling two cultures, nostalgia for a simpler, primitive past vies with wonder at the persistence of habits of thought, patterns of life, and modes of belief that surely ought to be extinct, mere harmless fossils. Garcia Marquez turned puzzlement or outrage into ironic wonder, and he enhanced the strangeness of the real. Today, we see his influence in such celebrated writers as America's Toni Morrison, India (and England)'s Salman Rushdie, and Trinidad's V.S. Naipaul.
Rating: 
Summary: An Oprah Classic (in other words Boring, a Non-Sense Story,
Review: It was a required reading in college in 1990. It was boring then as it is now. No wonder it was selected as an Oprah Book Selection. Most Oprah's book are boring but with HYPE. The story does not follow any logic even within the story itself. You will get confuse with the repeated combination of names that are used througout the story. I believe there are only 5 (Jose, Aurelio,Miguel, etc) Fiction does not follow logic I know but usually a story (even a work of fiction) sets boundaries within the story itself and are bounded by this limit. This story is a waste of paper on which it was written. Marquez is one of those overhyped writers with nothing to show for. I guess this is the result of some literary critic needing to sell some books to get a comission from the publishing house. Sorry if I was mean but I was forced to read it college and felt that it was a waste of time and money.
Rating:
Summary: Boring, boring, boring
Review: I thought it would never end. I can't believe I read the whole thing!
Rating:
Summary: Get the tape
Review: I loved this book although I admit that I was confused a lot while reading it. I choose it for my book club and purchased an audio tape - I think I got it from amazon.com - that really helped me make sense of it. Everybody in my club hated it-several were forced to read it in college and didn't want to read it again. I was captivated by the magical realism and the idea of the perpetual cycle of life. I'm surprised Oprah selected it - it is really difficult. I also read Love in the Time of Cholera and thought it was much easier to read. Marquez is an author everyone who loves reading should attempt. If you can just stop insisting on instant gratification and keep on reading even it it doesn't make sense and even if you can't keep track of all the characters-just keep on reading and let the story get into your blood. It truly is magical.
Rating:
Summary: CONFUSING AND ENCHANTING, DIFFICULT TO READ CLASSIC
Review: This is not an easy to read book; if you are looking for light reading, this is not it. Also, this is not a book to read quickly; it takes a lot of reflection to try to grasp the meaning (and often times you don't) of the wonderous stories. Having said that, this is a wonderful book. Garcia Marquez tells the story of a family and a town, Macondo. The things that happen there are surreal; strange murders, sleeping disorders, scientists, soldiers, all revolve around the mansion of the Buendia family in Macondo. The tales introduce the reader to 20th century Latin American literature, with tales of love, sadness, desperation, hurt, and loss. This is Garcia Marquez's most famous work, and arguably his best. It is a book to be savored slowly, page by page, contemplated and reflected upon. If you are looking for a page turner or light reading, feel free to skip this book. It is made for a very specific type of reader, one that will take the time to decypher the meaning of the stories and uncover the artistic content hidden just below the surface of the page.
Rating: 
Summary: uncannonized
Review: doprah picks a book that should be ousted from the canon. (shot from it?) there's no melody, as it were, in this text. (yes, it's more of a text--hence, chore--than a book). magic realism=jiggery-pokery. you don't care about the characters as it's incredibly difficult to visualize them--and then you find that scads of them have the same name. ontology recapitulates...nonsense. you want something fantastical, go to Angela Carter. this guy spawned Salman Rushdie's awful indulgent junk, man. (although i remember "love in the time of cholera" being an all right read. double-yucky!
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Story
Review: 100 Years of Solitude is an amazing story where reality and fantasy meet in the lives of the Buendias. Throughout the history of this one family, it is hard to tell what is fact and what is fiction. The best comparison would be to "Big Fish" in which the stories are tall-tales, but yet not without fact. All in all, I recommend this book to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: All tell, no show
Review: I read literary fiction, "smart" books, and could deconstruct an eggplant if I needed to. And this book is a chore to read. It is all tell and no show. One long narrative. But that is not what I consider to be the source of the problem. Here's what is: the book is not compelling. Many people assume a book that has won prestigious awards must be great, but awards can spread like a virus, wiping out independent judgement along the way. I just finished reading Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy. It is smart and beautiful and compelling and much more worthy of your reading time.
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