Admittedly there are realities that have kept me from breezing through this novel at a quicker pace, but those same realities are simultaneously changing my perception of what I am reading. Just as a reader brings the past to his interpretation, he is affected by the present and so instills his reading with new, constantly changing and updated ideas.
At this point in my days, 100 Years of Solitude is perhaps the perfect selection to be involved in. I read sporadically but daily, and do not cover many pages at a time. But the added time load assigned to a reading is taken instead by reflection, application, understanding. I must go back and pull excerpts to illustrate my analysis and thought process (and will do so shortly), but I find myself trying to comprehend the Buendia family just as I am now doing with my own. I feel I am missing the whole point of the novel, perhaps, by trying to imbue the characters with emotions that upon consideration and replay, are not clear except to cubicleize them into separate chunks of ice. Will they form together an igloo I wonder?
We are never told by Marquez how any of them feel. We are told what they do. The character I felt closest to was Jose Arcadio Buendia, and with his death, I feel alone. Ice-olated.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology