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Final post!

I am honestly having a minor crisis about nearly being done with my first year of uni because I basically feel 16 still but I going to ignore that for now. This term has been genuinely awful in many way but this class was actually not a contributer for that which was very pleasant for me. I have not read as much as I did this term in so long and while I definitely did not enjoy all the books I picked I always found them interesting. Not even going to try to pretend I always closely read the book of the week, sometimes it was more of a 'yes I am certainly reading a book right now' vibe when I really just wanted to get the general plotline down and finish a blog post but, there was more times than I expected when I genuinely sat down and got really into what I was reading. Great example would be me curled up under my desk (it just seemed right) to read the entirity of Bounjour Tristesse with only a small break in order to cringe at everything I just read.  Anywayyy. I literally s...
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Amulet, Roberto Bolaño

      One of the wonderful things I have realized throughout this course is that, despite how I have been often made to feel throughout other literature classes, it is not always necessary to pick out every detail and hidden theme from a book. I am all for analyzing stuff but I've noticed while reading and writing these blogs that often it really isn't necessary.  Roberto Bolaño's Amulet  was another great example of this for me. Last week I read The Trenchcoat  and learned about an awful situation that I had not known anything about previously. This week I also found myself learning something new and once again questioning why the American school system taught me literally nothing about other countries' history. I am sure I could have found some underlying things throughout this novel but just reading it and understanding the situation was enough.      Amulet  was a novel narrated by Auxilio who hides in a bathroom stall as UNAM is...
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The Trenchcoat, Manea

            I am very glad I watched part of the lecture video *before* reading this novel. Having a little bit of context about what was happening in Romania made things make a lot more sense than they would have had I been reading blind. Even still, t his novella was pretty confusing, not because I couldn't understand the writing it seemed by design, I can reread a page and still be left feeling confused even while understanding context and what had occurred plot wise. I get the sense it was intentional, a reflection of the time the book was set in and it seemed obvious that most of the characters didn't fully understand what was occurring either. There was a overarching feeling of fearful uncertainty thinly veiled by social niceties like those that were seen at the dinner.        Initially, I was pretty confused by the first section of the novella, a conversation occurring sometime in the future that had absolutely...
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W, or the Memory of Childhood

       Finally! An author I know! I have been SLOWLY reading Perec's A Void  for ages now, I really cant get into it because I keep just rereading sections to make sure there is really no 'e' there. I have to admit the difficulty I had reading A Void did not give me much hope for this book. I could talk extensively about my appreciation of A Void  in an artistic, boundary pushing, breaking away from norms wowee kinda way but as a book goes, it is kinda rough to read honestly. Anyway! Onto the book I am actually meant to be writing about. W, or the Memory of Childhood  was pleasantly read-able for me. It became very quickly obvious that there was two seperate sets of memories that were intertwined into eachother. A note at the beginning of the book brough to my attention that 'W' should not be thought of as 'double-u' as in French it is called 'double vé.' I do not know what the word in French but in Spanish I first thought of vida which I guess I sho...
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Lady kills cockroach and goes insane - aka The Passion According to G.H.

    W ell then! Ignoring the themes and deep meanings that I barely understand I have to just first stop and take a moment to question what I just read. Simply summarized, lady kills cockroach, goes insane... for over 100 pages. I don't know what I was expecting storyline wise but it was really impressive that an entire novel was created around one event. I wish I had a bit more time to dig into this novel (I procrastinated reading it over break woopsies) but as I don't, I have just had to try my best to understand haha.        Unsurprisingly, its pretty difficult to have a constantly original train of thought about one event occur for essentially an entire novel and I noticed there was quite a lot of repetition throughout. Little phrases and also just ideas (feeling/being unclean was a pretty continuous thing). H onestly the whole thing was pretty hard to read, I got lost a lot and found myself skipping large chunks of text in confusion. However, this repe...
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Bonjour Tristesse

     I am so glad that the past few weeks I have consistently enjoyed the books we have read. Bonjour Tristesse was filled with what reminded me a lot of high school drama. In reality I believe it was the results of both Cecile, the narrator and Raymond, her father struggling to let go of their youth. Anne, Raymond's latest fling turns out to be the change they both needed but Cecile especially did not want to accept into her life. Cecile begins the novella as a ignorant and honestly somewhat spoiled girl. She dislikes that the life she enjoyed living with her father is being changed by Anne, especially after she and Raymond decide to marry. It's not uncommon for kids to be upset when their parents remarry eventually but Cecile's plan to try to sabotage their relationship felt like a lot. I think she knew she was wrong, her frequent switches between feeling remorseful to guilty made it clear that part of her knew Anna was not actually that bad to have in her life. I was e...
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Agostino by Alberto Moravia

       Okay. Agostino was definitely very engaging, I sat down and just read the entire thing in one go. Granted I did have to entirely stop reading, like I mean fully close the pdf and just take a second a few times because just- what? As coming of age novels go, it was definitely not what I was expecting. My first thought as I began to read was of Freud. I have never taken a psychology class and I don't really know much about his weird, weird theories other than this particular one about young boys wishing to be their mother's lover in place of their father or another man. Strange concept, but the idea was painfully obvious in the first parts of this book. As he met the group boys, and, not to be dramatic but, had his childlike innocence ripped from him it seemed his view on his mother changed. He went from taking pride in her and her beauty to being uncomfortable around her, perhaps partially due to jealousy of the man who took her attention away from him but also...
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