One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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ISBN:0060883286

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez



FamousPick:

		Bill Clinton, former U.S President "..."

		Ann-Marie MacDonald, award-winning actor playwright and novelist "This was the most influential book of my early adulthood in terms pure literary thrill. "Magical realism" is a term coined for Márquez and the Latin American school of authors of which he is a stellar example. It describes the liberties with physical reality that Márquez takes and offers to us as part of just another ordinary day. The scope and narrative daring, the passion and political intelligence are soaring."

		James Patterson, Award winning American author "I think the main reason I've worked so hard to get my ten year old Jack hooked on books -- is that I wasn't hooked until I was a freshman in college. Ever since, reading has been one of the greatest joys of my life. Catcher in the Rye made a big impression on me in high school, but the book that got me hooked was 100 Years of Solitude when I was 19. Jack says that my Max series got him hooked. Makes me proud! What was the book that most influenced your life? A Hundred Years of Solitude is probably the novel that most influenced me as a young writer -- simply because as I read it, I realized that I could never do anything half as good. So why not try mysteries? Gabriel García Márquez's magical mystery tour begins with one of the most engaging lines in fiction: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." What follows is an exhilarating recounting of a century in the imaginary Colombian town of Macondo -- the comedies and tragedies, joy and suffering, sublime and ridiculous. An entire town, for example, is affected with insomnia at one point in the novel. A woman literally rises to heaven while drying her laundry. And eventually, the firing squad, fires. Some have called this the great American novel – only it was written by a South American."

		Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist "Reflects the richness of the Latin soul (and body). Every time you read this book, you read a different book."

		Edward P. Jones, The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winning author "Two books that I consider wonderful: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez -- which may not need further words."

		Oprah's Book Club "..."

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The Color Purple by Alice Walker

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ISBN:0671727796

The Color Purple by Alice Walker



FamousPick:

		Hillary Clinton "Alice Walker tackles some of American society's most vexing issues—race, gender and violence—through a memorable protagonist named Celie. The story of her growing up as a victim of abuse and her ongoing journey of self-discovery is a brutally honest assessment of human nature at its best and worst."

		Oprah Winfrey, Talk Show Host, The Oprah Winfrey Show "Quincy Jones was the first person who taught me what love is. It was 1985 when I first crossed paths with him, a year after I'd begun hosting A.M. Chicago. Around that time I'd read Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and when I heard the book was being made into a film, I remember praying, "God, please find me a way to get into that movie!" I would have taken any role—best girl, water boy, whatever. So I know it was providence when Quincy, who was visiting Chicago, flipped through the TV channels, spotted me, and believed I could play the character of Sofia in a movie he was coproducing—The Color Purple."

		Laila Ali, boxer, daughter of Muhammed Ali "..."

		1983 National Book Awards - Winner - FICTION (HARDCOVER) "..."

		1983 Pulitzer Prize For Fiction - Winners "..."

Source:
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http://www.oprah.com
http://www.nea.org
http://www.pulitzer.org
http://www.nationalbook.org

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2666: A Novel

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ISBN:0374100144

2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano


FamousPick:

		Robert Pattinson, Actor "Edward Cullen" Twilight "..."

		New York Times: The 10 Best Books Of 2008 "Bolaño, the prodigious Chilean writer who died at age 50 in 2003, has posthumously risen, like a figure in one of his own splendid creations, to the summit of modern fiction. This latest work, first published in Spanish in 2004, is a mega- and meta-detective novel with strong hints of apocalyptic foreboding. It contains five separate narratives, each pursuing a different story with a cast of beguiling characters — European literary scholars, an African-American journalist and more — whose lives converge in a Mexican border town where hundreds of young women have been brutally murdered."

		Publisher Weekly Best Books Of The Year 2008 "Bolaño's sprawling masterpiece revolves around a passel of academics, a reclusive German writer and a fictionalized Juarez, Mexico. Pure brilliance."

		Salon Book Awards 2008 "An elusive German writer and the murders of hundreds of girls and women in a bleak town on the Mexican-U.S. border are the two mysteries at the core of this expansive, mesmerizing novel in five parts. The critical reputation of Bolaño, who died in 2003 at the age of 50, got a massive boost in the English-speaking world with the publication of "The Savage Detectives" last year; we were skeptics when it came to that novel, but "2666" has made believers out of us. Bolaño pursues, with suave implacability, questions of art and evil through an immense web of stories, some humorously mundane, others as resonant and enigmatic as the great myths. On any page, you might be reminded of Borges or Melville or David Foster Wallace, but the totality is utterly original. Are the worst brutalities that humanity perpetrates redeemed or ameliorated to the slightest degree by our most sublime achievements? That's the puzzle this novel circles as it winds through academic conferences and coroner's reports, romantic triangles and gang killings, cafes and battlefields, with a light-footed and mournful curiosity that seems, despite the author's abbreviated life, nothing less than infinite."

		Time: The Best Book Of 2008 "When the first of Bolaño's major novels, The Savage Detectives, a massive, bizarre epic about a band of avant-garde Mexican poets, was published in the U.S. last year, it instantly became a cult hit among readers and practically a fetish object to critics. Bolaño's second (and last) major novel is titled 2666, and if anything, it is even more massive and more bizarre. It is also a masterpiece, the electrifying literary event of the year. With its publication by Farrar, Straus and Giroux this week — adding to an oeuvre that includes several collections of short stories, numerous novellas and minor novels, and a volume of poems due out later this month from New Directions — Bolaño's posthumous conquest of the U.S. will be complete."

		Village Voice: The Best Books Of 2008 "Apocrypha, secret history, and murder salt Roberto Bolaño's posthumous titan of a novel. United by the gravitational pull of Santa Teresa (a stand-in for Mexico's Ciudad Juárez), Bolaño's characters confront madness and a host of mysteries that are all, ultimately, the same mystery: lost writers, lost women, lost faith."

Source:
http://www.time.com
http://www.atwilightkiss.com
http://www.salon.com
http://www.publishersweekly.com
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.villagevoice.com

The Stranger by Albert Camus

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ISBN:0679720200

The Stranger by Albert Camus



FamousPick:

		Gwyneth Paltrow, Academy Award winner actress "....But one of the best gifts came from Ethan Hawke when we were shooting Great Expectations.I was having a hard time because my first big movie, Emma, had just been released, and everything started to change. I had my first crisis. I found myself asking, "What's happening to my world? To my life?" In the middle of all this, I went into work one day and found that Ethan had left me a big cardboard box full of his favorite books: The Stranger by Albert Camus, Motel Chronicles by Sam Shepard, The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, to name a few. Isn't that the best present? He gave the books to me with the intention of taking me outside myself and having me connect with poetry and literature—things he thought would give me perspective and make me feel better. It was such a generous gesture."

		Kristen Stewart, Actress and star of the film Twilight "I love Camus. The Stranger is one of my favorite books"

		Lifehacker: The Books That Changed Your Lives

Source:
http://www.aceshowbiz.com
http://www.oprah.com
http://lifehacker.com

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