Book: The Princess Diaries and Love in a Time of Cholera
Authors: Meg Cabot and Gabriel Garcia Marquez
PUblished: 2000 and 1985

Inspiration. I have none for these books. I read them, and I am left with perfect indifference.

The Princess Diaries is inoffensive. The plot lacks creativity. I have read several titles aimed at young adults, and more specifically young women. The books follow a pattern. Girl feels insecure, but has treasured friend. Girl wishes for love. Girl faces an unexpected event; I’m a princess! Girl struggles to be truthful about event which distances her from her true friend. Girl might try and date an obvious loser. Girl wises up, and grows a pair. She comes clean. Everyone is happy, and she realizes perfect boy was there all along.

Love in a Time of Cholera is not unlike the other Gabriel Garcia Marquez book that I read earlier in this book, 100 Years of Solitude. Characters with unrequited or ill-fated love are tossed about by multiple plot twists as quirky side characters provide equally quirky subplots. I have a thing with quirky characters. Obnoxious and interesting separate via a very slight line. These characters tap dance on it with abandon.

And with that I finished the BBC Big Read List. Anticlimactic isn’t it? I will publish my closing thoughts on that list in the next day or two.