Thoughts on books...

"Required reading for the entire human race?" Is there such a thing? This past week I read two different books that had that claim made about them. I only agreed with one of them. One claim was made by William Kennedy, New York Times Book Review of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The other was made by, of all people, Oprah, about Night by Elie Wiesel.

And my agreement goes with.....Oprah!

Personally, I did not like One Hundred Years of Solitude. Marquez is known for masterfully weaving together the real and the imaginative, and he writes with a very Latin flavor. But, I could not get past the incestuous themes that permeated the book. Call me a prude or old fashioned, but it just grossed me out. And, I struggled keeping the characters straight (thank goodness for the family tree at the beginning of the book) because they kept reusing the same names.

Night, however, was well worth this accolade. It was horrible in its subject matter. The kind of book that caused me to weep over the ugliness that mankind is capable of. It was not an enjoyable read, but a necessary one. A man who could have written volumes on his experiences limited himself to 109 pages. But Wiesel gets across more in those pages, in his story, than if he had written 1000. Sometimes less is more. Spot on, Oprah!

To continue my theme of *light* reading I just finished The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. This book came highly recommended by some of my favorite readers so I was anxious to dig in. But, I must confess that I am not ready for this book. I have not lost someone close enough to me to need the words in this book. I know that someday I will have a need to revisit it but for now, thank God, I can not truly relate.

OK, I am ready for some fun reading. Unfortunately, I'm still 56th on the waiting list for the new Sue Grafton mystery. She's up to S, now. I'm in the mood for a good Grafton read right now.