Rating: 
Summary: Hauntingly beautiful
Review: "One Hundred Years" is a pleasant gift to World Literature. The saga of the BuendÃas is soooo grandly descripted that it will still make one reflect about it for a long time after finishing the reading. The carachters are lovely, or dreadful, but always mystical and picturesque. "One Hundred Years" is a fiction dressed of reality, because Macondo and its exotic inhabitants seem so real that the SUrreal details only contribute to create the magic atmosphere of the "novel". ESSENTIAL READING !!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Drawn Out
Review: 100 Years of Solitude is a dense, confusing novel that is seemingly endless. Most of the characters have the same name - either Jose Arcadio or Aureliano for the boys and Amaranta or Remedios for the girls. The chapters are long and have large amounts of action. Most of the chapters are very similar: incest occurs, a child is born, named Jose Arcadio, he studies Melquiades, fights with some people, has a mistress, several children, and then dies. I do not recommend this book for anyone that wants a quick/easy/interesting read. It is well written and conveys many themes and such, but is purely painful to read.
Rating:
Summary: awesome
Review: Certainly a great novel. This story is about various generations of a family. A book once you start reading one cannot put it now. Be warned it is a large boo, so start reading it only when you have loads of time.
Rating:
Summary: Obra maravillosa de la imaginación del maestro colombiano
Review: Una novela fascinante que impulsa a la imaginacion a volar hasta lugares miticos como Macondo. Es un libro que nadie deberia dejar de leer. Indispensable obra de la literatura universal. Garcia Marquez logra hacer vivir a los Buendia en una historia llena de magia, amor y desamor, fantasmas, sangre, recuerdos, tiempo...
Rating:
Summary: Five stars to the hundreds I wish I could add
Review: Gabriel Garcia Marquez stands out as my favorite Latin American writer...well, favorite writer from anywhere. His masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude served as an introduction to his work for me. I was blown away when I read this novel...just the way he thought when first encountering Kafka, I repeat his thoughts: "I didn't know people could write like that...I didn't know it was allowed." I became completely caught up in the world of the Buendia family from the start and was not able to put down the work until I reached the last page where "la ciudad de los espejos (o de los espejismos) seria arrasada por el viento y desterrada de la memoria de los hombres" After my first encounter with his work, I was not able to stop myself and have now read more into his body of work. I thoroughly recommend "El amor en los tiempos del colera", "Del amor y otros demonios" and "El coronel no tiene quien le escriba." I am anxiously awaiting the publication of his memoirs as I know his millions of fans are doing. If you are not able to read his work in the original spanish version, I won't tell you how much you are missing out on...Traduire c'est trahir!
Rating:
Summary: Reality magically mirrored
Review: Probably the most complex but at the same time most enjoyable of Garcia Marquez' books. Vibrant and colorful description of a Colombian "Macondo" that takes the reader through a deep journey of the local insights. One of the greatest books I have read.
Rating:
Summary: Puzzling Perfection
Review: This book is a classic to be read over and over. When I got to the last page, I started the book over again just like I was turning the next page. Upon second reading, the storyline (which admittedly can be confusing) made more sense. The only complaint I have about the book is that characters first names are all so similar that the reader must continually consult the family tree at the beginning of the book. The book is an astonishing achievement of literature, and the reader must be willing to suspend belief and be challenged. For me, this book was a bit like water: fluid and moving, reflecting, rushing or still. It has so many qualities that are had to put words to. Also, the story has a very timeless quality to it in that the reader is forced to be completely present with the story; one can truly only be with this book one glorious sentence at a time.
Rating:
Summary: Why the existence of time is just an accident
Review: How many Aurelianos, Arcadios, Joses and Buendias can one remember? How many civil wars can our countries suffer without autodestroying itselves? How many years have to go by before we understand who we are, what we are doing and how do we fit into a master plan? Well, Garcia Marquez discovered it: none. Or hundred. But he discovered something more important: time is something it happens when you want to be aware of it. GM told his wife (back in the 50s) not to bother him for a year, (you see, time can be a personal invention) because he was going to write a masterpiece. Mercedes did miracles to mantain her family for that period, but finally, when Gabriel emerged, he had 500 pages of pure wonder. His first tentative title was "La Casa Grande" (The Big House) but, if he was to invent a new category (magical realism) he understood he must choose a better title. No printer in Mexico (where he had wrote it) or in Colombia (where he was born) accepted it. So, with the last few bank notes he had, he sent it to Buenos Aires. Yes, the only copy of it (and there was no Fedex!) Editorial Sudamericana published it immediately, and it was a storming success. Since then, this novel triumphed all over the world, despite translations (I've read it both in Spanish and English and the magic's there) and, with the help of Cortazar's Rayuela put Latin America in the cultural map. But what is so astonoshing about a lost town, a family that repeats its names and its traumas, set in a country whose distraction is doing the best to eliminate themselves from the face of the earth? 1) He demostrated that the judeo-christian theory of linear time is just a myth. Like Galileo before, he's discovery was rejected, but now we know better: time is circular, but we can modify it if we only have the guts to do it. 2) Good literature does not need parameters. Long sentences? Repeating names? Difficult to follow plot? To destroy, one must first create, and this novel inventend not only a new theory of time, but also a new one in literature. 3) You must have one and only one objective when writing. be honest to yourself. GM discovered this, quit life for a whole year, and produced the Buendias'story, a story that, if you read between lines, is the story of Latin America. Before you realise that you have but one chance in earth, submerge into this novel, and come out a new person
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Novel...But Not a Favorite
Review: Although I liked some aspects of One Hundred Years of Solitude, I do have some bones to pick with it. For one, I don't like the way Marquez tells the story. It is not in chronological order. To be honest this isn't my favorite way of telling a story but that isn't the worst part. What really bugs me about it is the fact that he spoils his future events. Not by foreshadowing but by blatantly telling you what will happen later in the story. Another problem is his sentence structure. Some of them were quite long. I like highly expressive writing styles and complicated sentences, but Marquez does it all wrong. There was one particular one that started more than half way up page 348 and ended at almost the bottom of page 350. Now call me cynical, but that sentence was pretty much a short story in itself. Needless to say I didn't like his sentence structure. (I highly doubt that this extremely long sentence was made with the translation since Marquez complimented Rabassa on his work and even said he preferred the English version of his novel.) I must say I did enjoy the actual story and the message that Marquez was giving. He was very symbolic and I liked that part of the novel. In all I think that One Hundred Years of Solitude was good but not the best. If you're curious about my favorite novel, here it is: the unabridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
Rating: 
Summary: Too melodramatic
Review: This novel is written in very interesting and compelling prose, but its characters are hardly worth the effort. The charaters are obsessive bores that can only be compared to day time soap opera characters. After reading through half of this novel, I was so numb from the constant tragedy and melodrama, that I simply did not care what happened to the characters anymore. To make matters worse, the plot is extremely complicated and very difficult to follow, with new characters added every chapter. The most amazing thing about this book is its popularity and that it helped its author win the nobel prize.
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