One of the most popular features in Shelf Awareness Pro is the Book Brahmin, where we ask authors (and others) questions about their reading habits, as we did recently with Adrian Harte. Had he ever faked reading a book? While he was dodging the question, he said in part: "Can you triangulate a book if you've read the work that inspired it, and the work it inspired? Gabriel García Márquez's Macondo is a few miles beyond the Castle of Kafka, but if you get to Allende's House of Spirits you've gone too far." In that answer, Harte mentioned an author who, over a period of eight years, has been the most-cited answer for every Book Brahmin question, from favorite authors to most memorable first lines. In tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, who died last week, here is homage from past Book Brahmins.
Favorite lines:
"There is no greater glory than to die for love." --from Love in the Time of Cholera, chosen by Jon Katz
"Amputees suffer pains, cramps, itches in the leg that is no longer there. That is how she felt without him, feeling his presence where he no longer was." --from Love in the Time of Cholera, chosen by Mike Greenberg
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." --from One Hundred Years of Solitude, chosen by María Dueñas (and many others)
Book they want to read again for the first time:
Philip Connors: Love in the Time of Cholera. "Rarely has a book so absorbed me in a fictional world."
Nic Brown: One Hundred Years of Solitude. "When I read the last line, my brain almost exploded. I can never put the pieces back together now."
Emily Raboteau: "Hands down, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Pure magic, every line."
Yes, magic. --Marilyn Dahl, editor, Shelf Awareness for Readers