Book Review | Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Ah, Mr. Márquez, how your years of solitude challenged me!  That book with its 457 pages was so drawn out.  But he really did develop those characters and boy can the man write.  His prose is beautiful.  But, Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a different animal altogether.

Its a quick book at only 120 pages, so the story is forced to move quickly.  You still get invested in the characters because the character development doesn’t seem rushed and magical prose is still there in this work just as it was present in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez from Flickr User: Ver en vivo En Directo

The astonishing part about the story is that everyone sees what is going to happen before it does.  The way that Márquez weaves the story is just amazing.  Following the story from one character to the next without stuttering, so smooth.  This novel earned a 4 out of 5 stars.  Not bad because after Solitude, I wasn’t sure I would read any of his work again.  Márquez is one of those authors that I fear, I just don’t get and there may be so much more to his writing that I’m just not able to grasp.  Lucky for me he as written more.

Catching Up

Library of Souls
Library of Souls

I’ve fallen very far behind on my posting to this blog.  I added six books to my reading list just now, which covers the last 5 months.  They are:

Many of the books listed above I read because I was at least slightly interested and I was participating in the adult summer reading program at my local library.  The last book on this list is the exception.  I read that just because I loved the first two books.  It took me a while to get to this last book because there are so many other books I also want to read.  I’m happy to have finally read it and I will update you all with a review soon I hope.

Now that it is Thanksgiving break I finally have some time to sit down and do some work in my office that’s not related to my day job.  I got some other things done as well.  I scan all the girl’s artwork that they give me.  I know we can’t keep it all, but I can scan it and store it on the Network Attached Storage (NAS) device we have.  I also have all our movies and tv shows stored on it.  I scan everything in using my trusty Canon scanner.  Thankfully, they keep their driver page updated, even for those of us that adopted macOS High Sierra early.

I’ve also been watching some more TV recently as well.  I started by diving into Star Trek DS9.  It is the only series that I haven’t watched all the way through.  I’m making my way through that on Netflix.  In addition, I’ve also gotten addicted to Stranger Things.  I’m early in the second season so no spoilers, please.  When I’m not watching those I’ve been making time to learn about class b RVs on youtube and got addicted to the We Are The Russos.

I’m not a camper, so I have not idea why I’m so into the idea of these RV things.  No idea where it all came from, but I’ve always been into the tiny homes stuff.  I think it is amazing the way that people find a way to make it with so little.  I have so much and the idea of paring down has always appealed to me.  When I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I really did get rid of a lot, but it really wasn’t enough.  We have a two-thousand square foot home and it is full!

Speaking of youtube. I think it would be a good idea to try that here.  I’m not one to sit down and record a video, but I think it would help drive traffic to the site and I know lots of times I want to watch a video of something instead of reading a bunch of text.  Sounds strange on a book blog site, doesn’t it?  I think some more about that one.  Lots of things to consider.

Lots of other things are also going on.  Work has gotten a lot busier and I started taking my weight loss a lot more seriously.  I watched Vegucated on Netflix and a few other vegetarian and vegan documentaries as well as Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead 2.  All these films together pushed me over the edge to go vegan.  I’m what you would call a lazy vegan.  I find my self-making exceptions to the dairy rule.  For example, I can not give up pizza so my give and take on that is ordering only vegetarian pizza.  It’s not vegan, but at least it is vegetarian.  I haven’t had meat in about four months.

I have been also going to the gym on average 5-6 days a week.  Pretty much every day.  I got a new Apple Watch and I’ve been trying to close all the rings every day.  Most days I make it and with giving up meat, it has been pretty easy to lose a lot of weight.  I’m down about 18 pounds from September.  I use my Aria, a Fitbit scale, to track my weight every day.  They have the 2nd version of it available now.  I was thinking of getting it because mine doesn’t always sync right.  I’ve had problems with it since the beginning.

I think that is pretty good for now.  Hopefully, more coming very soon.