No book readings this week! After a long three-four months and 11 books later, the course is hitting its final stretch. Whatever the reason, this semester felt like it went by in the blink of an eye. It was shocking to me to realize that it was the last week of class!  While I do want summer break to come so, I can relax and enjoy my free time, but at the same time, it feels weird not having to read a book every week. It’s almost as if reading a book a week has become a habit of mine, and this is very surprising for me because I’m not an avid reader. I don’t know whether or not I will be keeping up with this a book a week habit of mine but I certainly enjoyed it while it lasted.

This course was very interesting as it was done in a completely different format from all of my other courses. In the beginning, I was unsure of how this course would turn out since I’d only heard from a friend of mine that this course is reading and writing heavy, but soon I realized that I had no reason to worry since the way this course is done is really forgiving, with how there is no set rubric on the 400-500 word blog post and also the contract grading scheme not to mention the multiple options of books we got to choose from each week.

With all the books that were given to us, there were bound to be books that I enjoyed more than others. Some of them are Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia, Black Shack Alley by Joseph Zobel, and Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt. While the books that I did not enjoy were Agostino by Alberto Moravia and Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli, mainly because the two books were harder to read and understand for me compared to the other books in the course, especially Faces in the Crowd.  An honourable mention would be Death with Interruptions by José Saramago; while this book was not my favourite but to me, it definitely was the most unique and topic heavy book I’ve read this term, and it is one of those books that I would definitely not read on my own time if I was not assigned to it.

It has been a great experience taking this course; on my own, I would not even have known the existence of the books that were given to us. This experience of reading the book, writing about it, and then meeting in person to discuss it further really helped me understand the book better, but also, at the same time, it allowed me to connect with others and see how differently they understood the book from me.

Discussion Question

Of all the books you’ve read in this course, which one had the most impact on you?