Category Archives: Blog

So long, farewell, this is my last blog post (╥_╥) ~ Conclusion

Posted on by under Blog, Conclusion

We did it everyone! We are at the final stretch!

Closing Thoughts

I can’t believe this is my last blog post. After so many emotions, nights staying up reading, and page after page of books I would have never read on my own, I am honestly sad that it’s over. I initially took this class as an elective, so my expectations were not high. However, I am happy to say that this is one of the best classes I’ve taken at UBC.

Not only were the books legitimately interesting and fascinating, but the class environment was always genuine and stimulating. Usually, the mere thought of participation made me dread coming to a class, but I found myself growing more excited to come in and hear what our professor had to say and show.

You know, those scenes in movies where the professor is witty and bantering with a class, making everyone laugh. I always felt that was unrealistic or assumingly forced, but this class proved me wrong. I found myself laughing in person and with our classmate’s blogs. This course was genuinely a very pleasing and fruitful experience, especially seeing how academics do not need to be robotic and expressionless.

I really want to thank Professor Jon Beasley-Murray and all the TAs for their hard work throughout the term. The dedication and love you all have for this class is palpable and inspiring to witness each day. I know you will all continue to do and receive great things in life!

Top Picks!

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

The drama! The depth! The relationships! This book was jampacked with so many various themes and details. No wonder HBO made this into a show adaption.

I think the fact that both female characters were NOT portrayed as stereotypically helpless or like manic pixie girls really drew me in. What we read was girlhood throughout a time of adversity and survival of the fittest.

This summer, I am travelling to see my family in Vietnam, and that flight will be LONG and brutal. So, obviously, I have to download the series or read the rest of the books!

Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia

Even though this book was morally fucked up in so many ways, it was SO interesting to read. I was at the edge of my seat and audibly reacting to each page. Mix in a secret/forbidden gay romance? I’m hooked.

Even though this kind of made me spiral, thinking about what morality, proper empathy, and compassion were, I would definitely re-read this and try to find more I missed.

Lesson Learnt

Books are mainly a tool of escape and pleasure for me. That’s why I was hesitant about my ability in class, and this grew as I had a hard time liking our materials.  

However, a comment left by Tesi really stuck with me as I moved forward:

“I think that regardless of what we read and whether we agree or not with the behaviours displayed, everything we consume offers a chance to critically analyze ourselves and the world we live in. I hope you are able to at least grow in those reflections!”

Undoubtedly, I was aware of this but I never applied it too well with my reading habits. Every opportunity in life allows us to grow, in turn, I need to do this while I read. These books especially presented different points of history in the world and the vastly unique spectrum of human behaviour and emotion. Through reading, I did truly gain more insight into my beliefs and how the world constantly cycles around me. Hopefully, once this class is done, I can continue to seek books outside of my comfort zone and grow into a stronger and better person each day.

Closing Question

Did the classroom environment help change your perspective on literature too? Did you notice a change in your book preference after reading so many novels in this course?

Best friends? Enemies to lovers to stangers? More like borderline frenemies girl…. ~ My Brilliant Friend

Posted on by under Blog, Elena Ferrante

I cannot believe it, we are at the final book in this class. Congratulations everyone! I hope you enjoyed the blogs I’ve written, along with the books we read together <3

I am happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book! The subject matter is undoubtedly heavy, but the sense of (twisted) girlhood while trying to go against the “pre-destined” events (and rules) of life was captivating to hear. Notably, unlike previous books, I opted to listen to the audiobook (mainly because of easter weekend), which added to my experience. The translation is not exactly the same; I think it was created into more dialogue than descriptions, unlike the book. However, the story was equally as fascinating!

(Listen to it if you have the chance, it is an awesome listen/read!)

My initial thoughts on this book were optimistic. Based on its name alone, I assumed it would be a somewhat wholesome story of two friends as our main character, Elena, expressed her love for her best friend. Notably, this is not the case. It is unhealthy and ELENA is deemed to be the brilliant friend

The friendship between Elena and Lila is something I would consider borderline toxic, especially if I had that dynamic in my life. The competition was jarring and seemed to be masked under some clever pettiness or comment. Their friendship usually only seemed apparent when they needed each other help, debated about Latin or Greek or any language skills, and when they needed protection. Moreover, they both held resentment for each other, sometimes said directly or interwoven with their comments. Evidently, Elena was envious of Lila’s academic strength and outspoken nature, while Lila was envious of Elena’s opportunities and the sense of “freedom” from them. It was a push and pull between the both of them. 

The care they had for each other is shown towards the end of the book, especially in the scene where Elena helps Lila get ready for her wedding, washing her. In the audiobook, Elena describes how beautiful she is, and for the first moment, I can sense no envy in her comments. However, compared to the novel, it’s interesting to see Elena’s swarm of emotions: envy, sexual desire, anger, hostility, sorrow and pity. 

“I helped her dry off, dress, put on the wedding dress that I—I, I thought with a mixture of pride and suffering—had chosen for her.” (pg 313)

If anything, this sentence shows the complexity of the emotions they share for each other. As best friends, I cannot condone this kind of friendship to have, as it is rarely supporting and encouraging to each other. 

However, I keep thinking back to the statement said in the lecture video:

“Necessity imposes a taste for necessity which implies a form of adaptation to and consequently acceptance of the necessary, a resignation to the inevitable.” (Pierre Bourdieu)

While I do not personally want this friendship, I cannot condemn it too much because I am not experiencing an environment like theirs. They are trapped in a world of poverty, violence, misogyny, and classism. Out of necessity, Lila had to study through Elena’s textbooks, or Elena had to rely on Lila’s demeanour in her inner voice. They are consistently trying to adapt and survive while trying to overcome the set-in-stone customs of their town. Lila does not want to resign to the inevitable clearly, so she seeks Elena’s friendship as a tool. In both ways, they can support each other in their environment despite the apparent toxicity of it.

Questions: How would you define Elena and Lila’s friendship? Do you think it is healthy both in our standards and in the context of their environment?

Chameleons? No its a gecko, actually it is GEICO “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on fever dreams and car insurance” (not sponsored)

Posted on by under Blog, José Eduardo Agualusa

This week’s book made me feel like dropping to my knees and praising the sun in the sky. I actually ENJOYED the novel; who could have thought!! However, let’s not get it twisted, I was sometimes still confused throughout the story. You’d think our main character would be a chameleon, right? Wrong, he is a gecko! 

This is not the most incoherent aspect of the book (especially after watching the lecture). Still, it definitely left me expectant to see if Félix would transform into a chameleon physically rather than metaphorically. Instead, we saw him falling into an existentialistic spiral, repeatedly considering events to be a mere dream (which blurred the line for me to see what was tangible and what was in his mind as well). 

Perhaps this was a trauma response, both creating dreams to make things more digestible and tolerable or to eventually forget. That being said, dreams are usually fleeting, and either Félix truly feels sad about missing the chameleon—Eulalio—or he is frightened of the action of regressing memories and challenges this through his diary. Maybe I am looking too forward into this and applying my Psychology major to inconsequential moments…

Anyhow, José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel conjured a whirlwind of emotions, from awe at the writing style to baffling laughs at the plot points, confusion about whether I’m dreaming as well, and borderline existentialism about how life moves forward and whether I am just a chameleon too…

Clearly, this book made me feel a myriad of emotions. Some may find this annoying and bothersome, but this is what I seek in a book! A text littered with unique and complex tools — both in sentiments and plot points. This feeling is similar to one of the first lines in the story: “I don’t believe it—are you laughing? The creature’s amazement annoyed me. I was afraid, but I didn’t move, not a muscle.” 

It may be odd, but this line lingered in my mind, maybe because the first page is impressionable or because you can connect more meaning to it (at least in my experience). With Agualusa’s novel, it left me perplexed left and right, yet I could not put the text down — like my muscle was cramping or if I was frozen, standing in front of a scorpion (but not meeting death, thankfully, unlike Elualio RIP POOR BABY). Despite the atypical storytelling, it was rich in characters, literary devices, and entertainment! It definitely would be hard to find a book talking about the complexity of human behaviour and nature in this type of manner!

My question to you: Could you see a connection to repressed memories and dreams? Do you think Félix could be acting this way out of a trauma response? Or am I being batshit crazy 🙁

Can we please stop giving gay couples tragic endings ~ Money to Burn

Posted on by under Blog, Ricardo Piglia

Seemingly, each time I open a book for this class, I think, “This one will be better than the last!” And each time, I am severely wrong and confused. It is a talent, the way our books keep growing in their unhinged behaviour and storytelling. This may be because I read If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler prior to this week, or maybe because these authors are breaking my stereotypical and confined standards on novels. What is more frustrating is that I can never truly hate the books. They are encapturing in their own unique, messed-up way, and I can only put the book down if I know how it ends.  

This week’s Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia was preciously like that. It was so chaotic, hard to read and decipher at times, and crude. I kept thinking to myself, am I high? Is the writer high writing this? Is cocaine really a drug worthwhile? Which character is high right now? And literally, who isn’t high at this point? I literally had a dream about buying a massive cartoon-sized bag of cocaine to sell in between the days of reading this. It was wild.

(My fever dream of being in the mafia with them)

Evidently, this is not what kept me interested in the story. Notably, the action-packed writing, character-building, and unique relationships were intriguing enough to push through to the end (even if it did seem like I was reading a fanfiction on AO3 at times…). Albeit, most of the were DEFINITELY flawed…I always think it is interesting when characters are not perfect and completely moral individuals. It highlights the dark side of humanity, that unfortunately always lives on even if we, as readers, do not want to admit it. 

Empathy is a large part of this because we can see bits of ourselves in characters, but once they make a mistake, and it snowballs into something worse and worse, we do not want to imagine that for ourselves. It might be a stretch to have this mindset, especially with the context of this book (drug, sex, MURDER), but little things like Fontán singing or the apparent love between Gaucho and The Kid can spark our conflict of empathy.

Especially the scene when the kid was dying, and Gaucho held him and called him sweetheart; it truly broke my heart. Even if that endearment was followed up from the question of killing a cop. 

“Then the Kid raised himself up ever so slightly, leaning on one elbow, and murmured something into his ear which no one could hear, a few words of love, no doubt, uttered under his breath or perhaps left unuttered, but sensed by the Gaucho who kissed the Kid as he departed.”

(STOMP ON MY HEART MORE, WHY DON’T YOU? CAN WE PLEASE STOP KILLING GAY COUPLES IN FICTION)

Backtracking on humanity, it truly shocked me that the act of burning all the money was the main enticement of anger. A dozen individuals were killed, yet we hold those lives below literal pieces of paper. It is a literal system made by humans; those papers would not mean anything otherwise. But lives? They have been the constant, not money. It shows how money can make us lack empathy as well; being blindsided to gain capital, a sense of power or a quick fix of happiness.

Questions: Did you find yourself conflicted about empathizing with the characters? Could you see yourself in any of them?   

Held at Gun Point to finish this book(s?) ~ If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino

Posted on by under Blog, Italo Calvino

As I am seated here at my desk, I do not entirely know how to collect my thoughts to discuss this novel eloquently. Initially, when deciding on books for my contract, Calvino caught my eye because I had heard one of his previous stories. Of course, it was batshit insane (sorry for my language), but it was cohesive enough to be both memorable and enjoyable. However, with this text, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, it felt more of a hassle and a building annoyance than anything. When Professor Beasley-Murray warned us a week ago about the absurdity and complexity of this text, I did not take it too close to heart. Truly, our professor was not understating how Italo Calvino would provoke and challenge our expectations. 

(Here is the story that made me pick Calvino, watch it if you’d like!)

If I could turn back time, I would tell myself to pick the other available story to save myself from the grey hairs this has caused. Of course, I cannot be like “I” and seemingly “make clocks run backwards” if I focus hard enough or even forcibly rotate the hands back around (literally the only moment in the book that made me laugh; that woman was NOT having any of it from this man). Calvino made me feel consistently irritated and confused. If this was his intention, he completely succeeded! It was not as if his writing itself was horrible; there were quite a few moments when I was encaptured by it. Calvino had a way of writing descriptions that made me so absorbed and eager for more. Nevertheless, the 4th wall breaks were a central part of the book, so these moments were scarce and far apart.

With all honesty, it was not the cliffhangers that made me feel annoyed or bothered entirely. More so, I felt as if I could not fit the targeted audience Calvino was aiming for. The text required close attention and analysis, which was almost impossible for me to give. There was obviously a more significant message than just presented at the surface; it was wholly a literature book, albeit non-traditional. A kind where scholars can gather around and offer theories or political anecdotes. After watching the lecture video, this further cemented the feeling of my inaccuracy. I wanted to be able to find the more profound meaning of his text, but it made me feel so confused and irritated.

As a reader, I am not one who always has this intention. Instead of true meanings, I seek an escape, something enjoyable, a text that would bring a particular emotion depending on my mood. In turn, a novel where that assumes my feelings or even body position did not sit right with me. I did not wish to straighten my legs out when the narrator demanded or marry Ludmillia at the end. At the same time, I felt terrible for my feelings. Especially when recalling, “When I think that the interplanetary expectation of these young people will be disappointed, I feel a certain sorrow.” Even if this was not directly targeted at the readers, I took it as such.

Questions: Did you have any contradictory feelings about this novel? Was it both enjoyable and frustrating for you? Or did you completely loathe it? How did your reaction make you feel? (Please answer in the thoughts section below!)

Spam prevention powered by Akismet