Going by the title alone, “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, this seems to be the perfect book to close the year on, doesn’t it?
Books translated from Spanish aren’t my favorite in general. I’m sure that in Spanish it is beautiful, but translated into English, it sounds choppy and it’s hard for me to get a reading rhythm going. Also, by reading it in English, I miss all the subtleties and nuances of the original language, not to mention the culture behind the words.
It’s things like this bit from Wikipedia that I would have completely missed if I simply read it and not researched it.
Love in the Time of Cholera – Wikipedia
“The term cholera as it is used in Spanish, cólera, can also denote passion or human rage and ire in its feminine form. (The English adjective choleric has the same meaning.) Considering this meaning, the title is a pun: cholera as the disease, and cholera as passion, which raises the central question of the book: is love helped or hindered by extreme passion?”
Maybe I should learn to read Spanish better. For this book, I’ll probably have to do a little more research as I read and afterwards to get more of the picture.
There’s work to be done, but I’m always ready for a good romance. Well, that’s not necessarily true, is it? I feel like romance novels in general set people up for relationship failure. Real life just isn’t like fiction. The more I immerse myself in romantic literature, the more I look around me and begin to feel disappointed.
Why does my lover not act like this? No one ever pined away for me?! Why can’t my life be this exciting? Then I get sad. Then my husband starts to wonder what happened to me. And then…ugg…I have to much of an active imagination, don’t I?
I’m reading this one with a different mindset, especially since reading some of the Wikipedia article on it. I think I’ll look for some literary articles about the book and attempt to find out why people consider this a “classic.”
I’ll be posting quotes and thoughts about the book once I finish, so stay tuned!