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Final blog post

Here comes the final blog! I would say most of the books we read in this course are quite interesting, and reading them is a great deal. I learnt a lot about places I never been to, and wish if I am able to visit some of the places in the books, such as the Diamond Square from The Times of the Doves, Napels from My Brilliant Friend, and Combray from Combray. These books are great things to talk about with people outside of the class. Just made them think I am knowledgeable and have a very good taste!!!

Before I took this class, I had the habit of reading but did not have the habit of writing. Throughout the course, I actually found writing blogs to be quite interesting and fulfilling, I don’t think my writings are entertaining enough for others to read tho.

Also, thank the teaching team for helping me out during the semester, especially for the time I deleted my blog site:)

I would like to give out some award to the books I read!

The most surprising book:  The Book of Chameleons. I don’t understand why. Even though I have not read a lot of books, I always find the books I am reading to be cliche. But it does not apply to this one. I picked this book to read because of the word “Chameleons”, but there is no chameleons in this book.

The best plot twister: My Brilliant Friend. You know what, after the lecture on Wednesday, I read all the spoiler on Wikipedia for the things happened later on. WOW! Never trust Nino. And it is literally breaking the third wall when I read about Lila working at IBM in the IT team. omg this is too close to the reality:(

The best click-bait title: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.  Before I read this book, I did not expect it to have so many books embedded.

I am afraid if “he” will come back: The Time of the Doves. When I was reading, I was afraid that Quimet will come back and say “Hey! I am still alive!” at the end. Fortunately, it does not happen.

Let’s go back to the initial question that was asked in the first lecture: What is the boundary between a novel that is only a novel and a novel that can be called as a literature? The pattern I notice is that all the “literature” we read in this class has very obvious “people vs society” kind of conflict, and there are clues of some historical incidents in the books.

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Mission Incomplete!!!

I have to confess that I picked this book because the title is sooo poetic. It is an unfinished sentence, so I guess that there may be a cliff hanger at the end of the book. Clearly, there is something similar but not exactly a cliff hanger.

I found the book to be sooo CHAOTIC when I started to read it. The first chapter is fine, I know the point of view is a bit weird, but there was a mission! I really want to know why is the suitcase important and what is inside the suitcase, but I never got to know. Anyway, the first chapter is still more fulfilling than the ones after because I know at the end that Chief Gorin was the person the narrator was looking for. The stories, or fragments that appeared later are different.

The constant change of exposition made me confused. I read about an argument in class about Cimmerian language, then suddenly been directed to read about a war. The characters surrounded the narrator change as well. Then at the end of chapter 5, Italo introduced another story Looks down in the gathering shadow. At this point, I really feel like Italo has many ideas been drafted but they are not good enough to be written as an entire book, so he combined those ideas together to be this book.

As I just thought in this way, Italo wrote in the beginning of the chapter 6 that readers are wondering the complete volume must exist, and they are seeking for those. Ya, exactly, this is what I was doing! Then, I took a step back, reflecting on the previous stories. Even though the first story gives a satisfactory ending, it does not mean anything to me. When I was small, what I usually do is looking for what I perceived from the book name. And if the book does not go in the way I expected, I just put it away.

It is interesting that the book constantly talks about reading a physical book when I was reading it on my tablet. It is not just about reading a physical book, it is the old ones, where we need to use the paper knife to cut the pages. I have never read a book like that, so correct me if I am wrong. I feel like the movement create a feeling of uncovering while reading a book. This book gives me a lot of feelings about uncovering. The first a few pages are about a station, it turns to a cooking scene afterwards, then it starts to describe a conversation at uni, and the prison at the seashore, etc.

The question I asked for this week is: is there any connections you guys found between these fragments?

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Evenness?

“I told him I was used to hard work.” This sentence on page 156 made me feel bad for Natalia. Throughout the book, Natalia is described as hardworking. Before her marriage, she worked at a pastry shop, but her salary was controlled by her father. The narrator describes how her father yelled at her when she asked for her own money and “finally” “said yes and he’d pay half the rent” with her money. The subject here makes it sound as though her father was paying the rent for her, but it was actually the money she had earned herself.

Quimet, on the other hand, is also manipulating her financial situation. Right before they got married, Quimet proposed the idea to “go fifty-fifty on the apartment” [38]. Even though this sounds equal, Natalia was not able to pay the money because of her father’s control at the beginning. Both Quimet and Natalia’s father represent patriarchal figures who exploit Natalia financially.

Quimet always wants to pursue this type of equality, which is ridiculous, to be honest. For some unknown reason, there is a worm inside Quimet’s stomach. When he finally vomited the entire worm, he claimed that Natalia and he were “even,” because she’d “had the kids and he’d had a worm fifteen yards long” [78]. How can he call this even? In another part of the book, Quimet shows disrespect regarding Natalia’s labor. He complains to other people about how she broke the bedpost [62].

Should I call this manipulation? I am hesitating because I don’t think Natalia’s father and Quimet manipulate her on purpose. They are doing what benefits themselves the most. The claim for evenness is also inconsiderate and selfish.

In the later part of the book, Quimet proposes raising some doves so that they can earn extra money. However, the entire task is assigned to Natalia. She has to bear the smell of the doves, paint the walls, and so on. Throughout the entire process, Quimet barely participates, just as he barely participates in raising their children. It is true that at the beginning, neither of them is good at raising a child. Natalia tries to feed her son orange juice, and Quimet leaves him in the cradle without comforting him at all when he is crying. But while Natalia is trying to make her son feel better (even though the method is completely wrong), Quimet is not attempting anything at all.

So the question I have for this week is: Is evenness important in marriage?

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