On April 11, 2011, I published my first ever DBRL blog post, “Resources for Writers at Your Library.” While many older articles are no longer in the archives, I’m an information hoarder and have maintained a spreadsheet listing the ones I’ve written. This post you’re reading right now? Number 100 for me. To mark the occasion, I’m focusing on books with 100 in the title.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, published in 1967, follows several generations of the Buendia family, living in the remote Colombian jungle town of Macondo, established by their patriarch. I read this book more than twenty years ago, yet there are images that remain fresh in my memory — the reaction of someone seeing ice for the first time, a scene with ants that still makes me shudder. Incorporating magical realism, ghosts and a lot of metaphor, the story interweaves much of the history of Colombia into the telling. No matter the remoteness of the family dwellings, they are unable to escape the encroachments of the railroad, a civil war, and United Fruit.
“100, What Time Creates.” Anastasia Pottinger says her goal in
putting together a book full of photos of centenarians (people aged 100+), is “to show the beauty, the frailty, and the history evident on the human body.” There are many close-ups here: hands, hair, mouths, folds of flesh, mosaics of wrinkles. Some of them almost look like landscapes, a sort of geography of aging.
“100 Amazing Facts About the Negro” by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is my current read. It’s an updated and expanded version of Joel A. Rogers’ book by the same title, published in 1957. Rogers was a long-time correspondent for the “Pittsburgh Courier” and dedicated himself to the cause of researching and sharing Black history. I’m a third of the way through Gates’ book and have learned a lot. Mexico had a Black president 180 years before the U.S. did; what’s myth and what’s documented fact about Harriet Tubman; a bit about Black saints; what has been learned about the roots of the U.S. population through the use of DNA testing and what the limits are to what it can tell us. I look forward to learning more..
“100 Things Royals Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die.” Though 
this book was published in 2014, the year before the Royals achieved their first World Series win in 30 years, Matt Fulks has provided a wealth of information sure to intrigue avid fans of Kansas City baseball. I’m the perfect demographic for this, having grown up in Kansas City during the years of George Brett, Amis Otis, Frank White, Dan Quisenberry — I’ll stop before this becomes a pages-long list of every player I remember with fondness. I’ll let readers find out about them from the book.
After 100 blog entries, I’m still enthusiastic about this gig. Here’s to the next 100.
