9. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Although it took me a chapter or so to get into it ... this ended up being one of the best books I have ever read.
The story is about a man, Florentino Ariza, who falls in love with a woman by the name of Fermina Daza while they are both teenagers. They write each other love letters for years, and Fermina says that she will marry him - but then her father sends her away when he finds out about Florentino, who is not of the same class as them. Soon, Fermina falls out of love with Florentino and ends up marrying another man - a doctor.

Florentino is not discouraged, and vows to wait for her - even if he has to wait as long as it takes for her husband to die. At first, he says he's going to save his virginity for her - but after he has sex for the first time, he realizes that "his illusory love for Fermina Daza could be replaced by an earthly passion." And so he starts a notebook which is inconspicuously labeled "Women." "His first notation was the Widow Nazaret. Fifty years later, when Fermina Daza was freed from her sacramental sentence, he had some twenty-five notebooks, with six hundred and twenty-two entries of long-term liaisons, apart from the countless fleeting adventures that did not even deserve a charitable note."

Despite Florentino's promiscuity, he does chase after Fermina for 50 years - "fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days and nights," to be exact. On the very night of Fermina's husband's funeral, Florentino shows up at her house and tells her, "Fermina ... I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love." I won't spoil the ending :)

Could we, today, truly love so selflessly?? To promise your undying love to someone, and to literally wait for a half century until you can be with them - even if that means foregoing marrying and having a family of your own? Is that romantic and demonstrating the utmost devotion (notwithstanding the fact that Fermino was certainly handling his "earthly passions" in the meantime) - or is it just plain crazy?

I don't think most of us could do that. I'd likely give up, eat a gallon of Haagen Dazs, block my lost love's emails, change my phone number, and move on.

This was a simply beautiful story. No wonder the author won a Nobel Prize for literature (for One Hundred Years of Solitude). Surprisingly - the movie was fabulous, too, and seems to have been fairly accurate. If you don't have the patience for reading the book (which is a bit long) - do rent the movie. You won't be disappointed!