I can’t believe its my last post! I have throughly enjoyed this little community we’ve all created and reading everyone’s blogs. This course was so unique and probably one of my favourite courses I’ve taken! I’ve never done grade contracting before and was a bit hesitant when I contracted to read 11 books. But now that I’ve finished, I feel so proud of myself and definitely feel like a better reader than when I started this class.

I remember during the first week of school I felt so intimated by the amount of blog posts we had to do! I didn’t realize how fun and flexible they could be. I loved having this space to write whatever I felt and not worry that my interpretations were bad or wrong. It was such a nice reflective piece after reading and it felt like being in a giant book club! One of my roommates and I love reading and always try to read the same book at the same time. We have so much fun debriefing the book together and talking about our favourite or least favourite part. This class felt like those moments!

I think I have mastered the art of speed reading and knowing which aspects of a novel to focus on. I used to be a slow reader and I am very happy that I got this practice of reading a lot. Reading these books also never really felt like a chore and was a little routine for me. I go to Victoria almost every weekend, which requires an hour and a half boat ride. Those rides were reserved for this course and it felt so poetic reading these books as I made my voyage across the water.

I feel like one of the biggest things I learned from this course was understanding different perspectives. I usually read books that are set in North America or that are fantasy, so it was such a treat to read books from different places and cultures. I feel like I got a taste of what life is like in other places and learned a lot about the political/conflicts in other countries, like the civil war in Spain and the colonization in Angola. Also with the blog posts, I was regularly offered new perspectives from my classmates. It was so cool to read their thoughts and there was so many posts that helped me understand the books better and give me new insights I would have never thought of before.

My list of favourite books:

• Book of Chameleons
• The Shrouded Woman
• The Lover

My least favourite:

• Money to Burn

My final question is, what’s up next book wise? What book have you been putting off because we had our class readings? Mine is the third book in the Crescent City series!

I hope everyone has a great summer xx