Love in the Time of Cholera

With Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I expected a better version of The Notebook, except set in Colombia and written with actual talent from a Nobel Prize-winning author. I was slightly disappointed. It's not a book I can picture Oprah trudging through. It was good. It was not very thought-provoking and sadly, it left me with a feeling of relief at its end.

This love story is not really a love story. The language he uses is rich and beautiful, you can almost smell the gardenias through the page. But the story itself only makes me sad. The man, Florentino Ariza, practically stalks the woman, Fermina Daza, for "fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days." She doesn't even love him until she is old and has no other options. Throughout, he is obsessed and writes sappy love poems and letters and weeps and becomes physically ill when she marries a wealthy doctor instead of him. And for the rest of his life, while entertaining his share of mistresses, he waits for the day of her husband's death to offer himself to her once more.

I do like the inscription written on the dedications page of my copy and I wonder who and where these people might be:
Nadia-I don't know if you already have this but it's one of my favorites & I thought you might dig it. Stephanie
Nadia, I bought your book in Long Beach for a dollar. Did you dig it?

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The Glass Castle

I'll build a castle that won't fall down...
-Eisley

I love the title of this memoir. The Glass Castle. It's mysterious and beautiful and brings images to mind of light and architecture and space and reflection. I love the meaning of The Glass Castle in the book: yet another of her father's dreams and unfulfilled promises. I love the vagueness of the summary given on the back cover. I love how, before I read this, I thought my childhood was pretty different and unique but in comparison it was the picture of normalcy.


In The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, what the main character, the author, goes through in this book is unbelievable. Her childhood is an erratic and unstable one, with a bright father, Rex, and an artist and writer mother, Rose Mary. Rex is a brilliant dreamer, interested in physics and aerodynamics but is an angry and destructive alcoholic. Rose Mary, having had to grow up quickly after giving birth to her children, is selfish and has terrible moodswings. Jeanette and her three siblings have to rely on each other and be a support system in a hectic place. From constantly moving and changing schools, to having so little money that they don't know where their next meal will come from, this family is constantly being tested. As Jeanette and her siblings get older, they look for ways to make it our on their own. To have lives with a little stability, and isn't that what we all want?

This book is more than a memoir of an American family, it is a piece of history. Not only a personal history, but of America and a struggling family in the West. America and the world have both changed so much even in just the past 20 years, and now more than ever it's important to look back on how far it's come. It's a story of survival and strength, from someone who knew nothing outside of the craziness she grew up in. All she knew is that she wanted something better.

Escape Artist

I was speaking with my friend John a couple days ago. He said that more than almost anything, he hates when people choose to do something as a form of escapism. "Whether it be drinking, gambling, drugs," he said. "I think to avoid the reality of our daily lives is one of the worst things you can do."

I agreed. How sad to feel you have to get away from your own reality. To numb, to forget, to seek out a false and temporary thrill from something insubstantial and fleeting. How very unstable a person must be to wish to shirk the responsibility of life!

But I immediately realised I am no better. I read! I obsessively devour books of all kinds: fantasy, novels, memoirs, science fiction, mysteries. I turn page after page for the sole purpose of reveling in the lives of these characters, their problems, their friends, their adventures. I feel what they feel, I learn from their mistakes, I drift away to the world in which they live. I am a true Escape Artist, maybe the worst kind.

I can't hide away in these private worlds forever. While I love to escape to these worlds far away, maybe it would be a healthy change to let some of it out. I have decided I will write as I read and share my thoughts as I think them, and I invite my fellow Escape Artists (I know you are out there) to follow along. I want to open a portal and combine the two worlds: the world of reality, and the world I escape to. Will I still be escaping? Of course. But maybe I can begin to face the world of reality with more gumption, more courage, and as whole-heartedly as I face the places to which I escape.

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