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*Featured Buddy Read*
This buddy read is featured on the homepage and is pinned to the top of the February Buddy Reads folder. Otherwise it works just like every other buddy read!

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You can join in the discussion even if your name isn't on the list!

This thread is to discuss Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez.

Pages: 348 pages

Length: 1 months (February)

Participants: Sophia, M, Lorraine, Afrodita, Luci

Everyone reads at their own pace during a Buddy Read. Because participants can be at different parts of the book at different times, it is extremely important to mark spoilers so that the book is not ruined for someone who is not as far along as others!!!

Mark spoilers by placing {spoiler} before the text and {/spoiler} after the text but use the < and > instead of the { and }.

Here are some questions to help get the conversation started! Feel free to look up discussion questions specific to this book or come up with your own. Just make sure any questions that contain spoilers are under spoiler tags.
Discussion questions are not required but may be a fun way to talk about the book and get to know each other!

Prior to starting:
What prompted you to join this buddy read?
Have you read this author before? What do you think of their other books?

Mid-read:
What character or ideas do you relate to the most and why?
Do you have any favorite quotes or scenes?

After reading:
What was enjoyable or not-so-enjoyable about this book?
Did this book change your perception about anything, either within the book (character development) or in real life?

I’ll join in this buddy read, I’ve got the book borrowed on my library app as one of the February time challenge books already!

Hi all, happy to be in this buddy read!

This will be the first regular-sized novel I read from GGM, I read some of his short stories prior and I can't help but think I'm going to love this one, I hope it won´t let me down! I loved his writing in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories and Innocent Erendira and Other Stories and I guess his style won't be too different in this one?

Anyways I had this book in my TBR pile since forever and this year I want to read a bunch of books from my "classics" list, so this will be how I start!
Happy reading :)

Happy almost-February everyone, thanks for joining me :) I read One Hundred Years of Solitude last year which was my first ever Gabriel García Márquez read and although it took me a long time, I enjoyed it. Love in the Time of Cholera made it into my TBR stack around the same time so I'm excited to read it. Coincidentally I was first inspired to read Gabriel García Márquez works via Looking for Alaska which is a YA fiction that references him a few times.

Happy reading!

I'm going to take part in 100 Years of Solitude, so I'm going to read this book after. I will take part in the discussion if time allows. I'm looking forward to reading both books. 100 Years has been on my TBR for a long time, & I've heard a lot of promising review on Love in the Time of Cholera.

Hi all. I chose to jump on the Love in the Time of Cholera read because this book is so famous! I finished this weekend and was really struck by this author's ability to bounce seamlessly between different points of view and timelines and I never got lost with the story. So masterful!

I am about halfway through and am finding it much easier to read than One Hundred Years of Solitude and I was not expecting that. I agree the jumps in timeline are quite smooth, at least for me, and maybe that's because I've read him before. (view spoiler)[I am enthralled with the story so far of Fermina and Florentino and how their lives are turning out so far. (hide spoiler)]

I've finished the book and found this story easier to follow than One Hundred Years of Solitude. The magical realism was less prominent, which, for me, was not a bad thing. I enjoyed the story and wondered if there were any autobiographical elements in it. Overall, a beautifully written love story!

I finished last night and I am so excited to talk about it lol... this was a great read for me and more different compared to One Hundred Years of Solitude than I expected. But then again, I'm not super sure exactly what I did expect. I agree there really wasn't very much magical realism and that was ok. It was a great story.

(view spoiler)[I am a sucker for a life or love story that isn't movie-production-perfect and that highlights the reality of life; which I felt like Love in the Time of Cholera embodied to a point. The way that young Fermina suddenly realizes she doesn't love (or maybe just doesn't want to?) Florentino, and how Florentino waits decades for the chance to woo Fermina again. How after five decades pass he starts to realize that he may never have that chance and struggles to handle that idea and come to terms with his aging. And finally how after Fermina does become a widow their relationship has to be re-established very slowly before he is able to love her outright.

I do feel a bit underwhelmed at the ending, however. It feels open-ended which I know is a common way to end a story (and truth be told I'm not the biggest fan of "perfect" endings because reality isn't perfect), but I guess I just thought that that the story would carry on until the passing of either Florentino or Fermina. Do we think they truly continued to go up and down the river for the rest of time? Did they maintain their honeymooning phase or did they grow frustrated with each other after being stuck on the boat after some time? I wish I could know (hide spoiler)].

Would love to read anyone else's thoughts on the ending.

I just finished the book (on the edge of the month!) and I'm still processing everything. Overall I stand by the opinion that GGM has a beautiful prose, he's one of the very few authors that don't make me reconsider when I see a 500 page book full of storytelling with barely any dialogue.

(view spoiler)[I love how he started from almost the end and then did a flashback to tell the whole story, it was a great way to set a point in the plot to look forward to. It was honestly a bit exasperating at times seeing how things went "off the rails" from the main story, and specially not really knowing whether Fermina's feelings were true or it was just her convincing herself of a lie.

I was quite taken aback by the story about Florentino and America Vicuña, I can't see it in any different way than with the eyes of the 21st century, so it bugged me a lot. Still the main story was just so rich, full of little details and the characters were so human (as in, imperfect) that I can see why this story is such a widely known example of Hispanic literature. The ending was perfect in my opinion, true to Florentino's romantic heart. (hide spoiler)]

@Sophia (view spoiler)[I absolutely understand your thoughts about the ending, I usually prefer a closed ending where the author wraps up the story and we know everything that happens with the characters. While I was reading the last few pages I was under the impression that one of them would die aboard and that by the time the boat docked whoever was left alive would be redeemed from giving an explanation about their love story. I admit I wish we knew what happened next, but maybe the author wanted to let the reader choose according to our own point of view? I definitely didn't consider the fact that maybe they'd fall out of love, but as I read you it did feel right with Fermina's personality lol, so it could really be anything! (hide spoiler)]