Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Horn Tooting Scale: 4 Toots of the Horn

• 1 toot for being by a Nobel Prize Winning author
• 2nd toot for being a foreign novel
• 3rd toot for being a historical novel
• 4th toot for being incredible hard to read past the halfway point

Points of Interest:

• Marquez absolutely captures that moment of panic (for me, about 3 months into a relationship) when the woman looks at her lover with revulsion and absolute rejection
• Realistic portrayal of marriage and love in one's later years.
  
• Lots of tidbits of knowledge, such as that mullein puts fish to sleep. I never knew that.
• Fermina's reaction to her husband's confession of infidelity as opposed to her appreciation of Florentino's lie of having kept his virginity for her. Interesting perception of what it means to be a man.
  
  

Synopsis:

Florentino Ariza fell in love with Fermina Daza when he was 17 and she was 13 years old. They kept up a passionate secret correspondence for 3 years before being discovered. Her father separates the young lovers by taking Fermina away to visit cousins in the countryside, yet the lovers still correspond by telegraph. They are wholeheartedly committed to marrying, until tragedy strikes when Fermina finally returns to the city of the Viceroys, takes one look at Florentino and realizes that she doesn't love him and never really did. Anyone who has been in a relationship is familiar with the occasional moment of complete incomprehension that this is the person that you have committed yourself to. Fermina makes a complete break with Florentino and at 20, marries her new suitor, the biggest catch in her area, Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Neither loves each other when they are married, yet over the course of a 2 year European honeymoon, they come to love one another. Indeed, their love seems destined by their respective perfection. Juvenal is the perfect man, and Fermina is close to being the perfect woman.
Over the course of the novel, Marquez goes into the most realistic detail of what it is like to fully share one's life with another human being. He makes a litany of all of the humiliating details of the aging process, as seen in the three main characters. All the while that Juvenal and Fermina are sharing their lives and 2 children, Florentino is patiently waiting for his rival to die so that he will have his second chance with Fermina. Yes, that sounds romantic. However, Florentino is not waiting chastely. He is the Don Juan of the city, the ultimate cocksman who has affairs with over 600 women, not counting the one-night stands that he also regularly indulges in. He causes the death of at least two women, one from a jealous husband and the second, a little Lolita who he molested or "introduced into love" at the precocious age of 13, by suicide for love of him.
Ultimately, Juvenal dies after 50 years of marriage, leaving the Widow Urbino and Don Floro to rediscover each other at the ages of 74 and 78. There is hearing loss; baldness; dimmed sight, "fermenting flesh" odors; sagging skin; impotence and enemas, but there is still love. This manages to be both disturbing and sweet, in the same way that Juvenal and Fermina's marriage was. I highly recommend this book and highly recommend fighting through the tedium at the halfway point and finishing the book.

Rick Steves' Best of Eastern Europe 2006

Horn Tooting Scale: 1 Toot

• 1 toot for being a travel book - for some reason, it's always nice to be seen reading a travel guide, unless you're in that country, standing on a street corner looking lost and wearing an invisible sign that says, "Mug Me"

Points of Interest:

• Austria, Slovakia (especially the High Tatras), and Hungary
• Countess Bathory's castle in Slovakia (she bathed in peasant blood)
  
• Lipizzaner horses in Vienna
• Spas in Budapest

Synopsis:

My branch library didn't have a Lonely Planet covering Eastern Europe. So, I picked up Rick Steves' guide just to get a general sense of the area. It's actually a pretty great guidebook. I wouldn't use this book to choose places to stay or places to eat, but it had great descriptions of the sights, the transit, and the nightlife. I especially liked his hand-drawn diagrams of various cities and major sights. The writing was clear and on topic, and 2 weeks after reading it, I bought a plane ticket. Thank you, Rick Steves!

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Horn Tooting Scale: 3 Toots

• 1 toot for books position as a 60s counterculture classic
• 2nd toot for its position as a literary masterpiece
• 3rd for Herman Hesse's status as a Nobel Prize winning author

Points of Interest:

• Instruction on Hinduism and Buddhism
• The Buddha is a character in the novel (no not the title character; the Buddha goes by Gautama - his second name)
• Excellent explanation of meditation

Synopsis: Siddhartha, a young Brahman boy, is a religious prodigy. At the time of the book's opening, he is a late adolescent (16-20ish???) and already has comprehended both Om and Atman. His every movement is graceful, and his every utterance brings joy to everyone around him. However, he is not happy. Pursuing self-actualization, Siddhartha goes off to join a group of Samanas, Hindu holy men who renounce possessions and live off of charity while moving from town to town through the countryside. With the Samanas, Siddhartha learns how to think, how to wait and how to fast.
After a few years of wandering through the woods suffering pain and privation, Siddhartha decides that he is no closer to his search for enlightenment. At this point, Siddhartha and his friend Govinda, who had followed him to the Samanas, decide to go in search of Gautama (the Buddha), of whom they had been hearing reports for quite awhile. They go to a town where the Illustrious One is speaking and after hearing of the Eightfold Path, Govinda immediately asks and is accepted to be taken on as a disciple. Siddhartha, though he believes that Gautama truly has received enlightenment and that his philosophy of life is the best that Siddhartha is ever likely to hear, decides that he himself can not reach enlightenment through another man's experience. So Siddhartha leaves Govinda and the Samanas and goes off to continue his quest for enlightenment. Siddhartha next makes his way across a river and to a town. There, he falls in love with a beautiful courtesan, Kamala, to pursue this passion and to seek enlightenment in her arms, he is instructed by Kamala to acquire wealth. Using his gifts for fasting, waiting and thinking, Siddhartha does in fact become wealthy. For 15-20 years, he stays in the town, loving Kamala and seeking enlightenment through sensuality.
At the end of this time, Siddhartha realizes that he is still not happy. He leaves everything behind and goes back to the river that he had crossed so many years before. At the river, Siddhartha comes close to killing himself, but instead has an epiphany that the river is holy. That it is part of all humanity and all history. He gradually discovers that atman can be found in the river, in a leaf, in a clump of dirt, in anything at all. This might sound more like an LSD trip than part of any mainstream religion, but when Siddhartha hears Om in the river, I felt it resonate through me. There's an extra little section with Kamala and Siddartha's son, where Kamala dies and Siddartha tries to raise his spoiled son, who rejects him and his life. Siddartha then realizes that this is part of the cycle of life and that he himself did the same thing to his father. I wonder if that part of the book is a reflection of the author's feeling about his own father-son relationship. Altogether, this book far exceeded my expectations. It was simplistic; a short easy read, but very tight and with plenty of tidbits to think about. I would especially recommend it to a reader in his/her teens or early 20s.

By the River Piedra I Sat Down & Wept by Paulo Coelho

Horn Tooting Scale: 2 Hoots!

• 1 for being authored by Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist, etc.)
• 2nd for being a foreign novel (culture, mind-broadening)
  

Points of Interest:

• Concept of "the Other", that inner being who is obsessed with acquiring wealth, status, and other inessentials that do not lead to happiness, and how to resist/suppress the mutterings of the Other
• Excellent treatise on self-actualization in engaging, novel format without excessive preachiness
  
• Mini-history of the miracle of the vision of Mary at Lourdes
• Exploration of the feminine aspect of the divine, interesting
• Asserts that love is a help rather than a hindrance on the path to self discovery
  

Synopsis:

Pilar attends a lecture being given by her childhood friend. This friend, who is now a monk, speaks on the feminine face of God and on the power of love. After the lecture, Pilar goes with him from Madrid to Seville for a second appearance, and then agrees to visit a small town in the Pyrenees with him.

Pilar slowly lets go of her preoccupation with school, study, thrift, planning for a safe retirement while still in her 20s and learns to disregard "the Other" that voice telling her to play it safe, that life is perilous. She begins to trust in herself and in God, culminating in a rainy overnight worship session at Lourdes with a group of charismatics who believe in the laying on of hands and speaking in tongues. Freed from the burden of daily cares, Pilar is free to love her friend and to decide to give up everything and work with him to bring the message of love and the feminine face of God to the world.

The mysticism was a little heavy for me, and having attended Pentecostal worship sessions, I was less charmed by the notion of speaking in tongues than the average reader might be. However, the concept of the Other, and the lesson to live in the now and trust in oneself and in others resonated with me. An excellent, thought provoking book.

Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President by Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of VZ's Controversial President

by: Cristina Marcano, Alberto Barrera Tyszka, Moises Naim (Intro), and Kristina Cordero (Translator)

Horn Tooting Scale: 3 Toots

• 1 toot for being a biography
• 2nd for being about a foreign country
• 3rd for being about a man of the moment (topical)
  

Points of Interest:

• Authors seem to be careful to stay neutral, yet reveal an anti-Chavez bias
• Close attention paid to Chavez's relationship with Fidel Castro
• Hugo Chavez doesn't need much sleep and is an autodidact who reads voraciously
• Hugo is a hottie! Apparently, he is quite the ladies man
• One of Hugo's favorite books is the Green Book by Muammar Qaddafi
• Hugo has his own TV show (Alo Presidente) that takes over the airwaves without warning, for an indeterminate length of time
  

Synopsis:

This biography was originally completed in 2004, then was revised in 2006 when it was published to include recent events. In that sense, it is a little patched together. It covers Hugo's life from his early years being raised by his paternal grandmother, being called Goofy by his peers, through to his time in the military, his love life, his time in prison after the failed coup against Perez in 1992 and his surprising electoral victory in 1998 and his evolving presidential style, including the mini-coup against him in 2002. The main theme of the book seems to be that Hugo's political convictions are opaque and possibly illusory, that he has become, if he wasn't always, a corrupt power-seeker, just like those that he railed against. The conclusion was that very few Venezuelan poor have actually been assisted by his programs, and all of his original inner circle has turned against him and now bitterly oppose him. The authors are clearly underwhelmed by Hugo's promise to stay in power until 2021. Viva la Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela!