It took me six months to read Gabriel García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude.

It took me four days to read Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood.

But I read them one after the other. And it surprised me.

This piece does not contail spoiler, I hope, but please read it at your own discretion.

Márquez and Murakami write from two different vantage points. Both come from radically different countries with radically different histories, yet they have managed to loop their readers into stories that mix, merge, and mutate magic and reality.

I read Márquez for the first time. I had been warned that Márquez would be a difficult read. And I had underestimated the suggestion. After finishing 100 pages of the book, I had to put it down. The reason: I was reading too fast to either understand the plot, or to appreciate the art.

I was re-reading Murakami for the second time. I remembered most of the major plot line from my first read and my second read, therefore, became much more fluent.

But there are other differences, even if one were to read both the novels for the first time.

Márquez uses long sentences, often. Some sentences are longer than half the page. One Hundred Years of Solitude is also a long book with densely packed textual layout. On top of that, Márquez has multiple characters with similar names sprinkled across the novel.

Murakami uses short sentences. His word choices are also quite short and so are his paragraphs’ length. Norwegian Wood is not bulky at all, and its setting feels much more contemporary that its counterpart.

To read a difficult book like One Hundred Years of Solitude taught me to stop, focus, and dive deep into the nuances of books.

To read a relatively easier book like Norwegian Book, that too for the second time, taught me to re-read books that reveal thematic complexities which manifest more vividly in the reader’s imagination only after the reader ages in experience and thought.

The take away, then, is to re-read books that grows reacher as one ages. But to do it slowly, and with intention, as much as possible.

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I’m currently re-reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami and reading Fydor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. What are you reading?

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