Categories
Conclusion

What do you mean it’s over?? Hello??

Hi Blog!!

I can’t believe that this is the last time I am saying that. Woah.

So uuuuh yeah. This is the end, I guess. Now that we are at the end of the semester, I feel as though it went by in a flash. I thought I was going to have a much harder time keeping up with the readings for this class on top of the readings for all my other classes, but that wasn’t something I struggled with until the very last book I read (which was My Brillliant Friend; at this point, the end-of-semester exhaustion had me struggling LOL). I’m not exactly sure how to structure this post, and the best idea I could come up with is compiling all the thank yous I want to deliver. So, for the last time, let’s get into it-

First off, thank you to our wonderful professor. I’m not sure how to address you in writing, so I’ll go with sir. Thank you so much for everything you taught both the class and me during this semester. I always really looked forward to coming to class because I knew we would have some really interesting conversations and discussions. I also have to thank you for creating such a welcoming and safe space for us to have said discussions. In theory, the idea of creating such a great space every week with a different group of people, and to then discuss topics that wildly differ from one another while having everyone feel okay with participating, seems like an almost-impossible task. And yet that’s what you led us to achieve throughout this semester, so thank you for that!! Also, thank you for the absolutely awesome selection of books for us to choose from, and for your dedication to the videos and conversation videos. It’s always easier for us students to get in the groove of a class when we notice the professor is really passionate about what they are teaching, and this class definitely falls under this category. So thank you so much for the awesome semester, sir!! As a final note, I’ll leave you a drink recommendation (since I always had fun looking at the pairings you suggested)- A brasilian lemon caipirinha, made with actual cachaça. Much like this class, you can “personalise” the drink by changing the fruit or the liquor you use to make it (strawberry caipirinhas are my favourite, but lemon is the classic flavour). It’s a refreshing drink that you can change every time you taste it, but the foundation of it stays the same, so it always feels a tad bit familiar. :))

Next up, thank you to our amazing TAs. Guys. G U Y S…… I am so sorry for my right in the nick of time blog postings. I am unfortunately a night owl who had too much fun writing these blogs, so I’d lose track of time and suddenly OH SHIT ITS 23:45….. You’d think I would’ve learned after the first few blogs, but unfortunately, the night book rants kept ending up with me submitting my blog super late. There’s also the fact that not one of my blogs is within the theoretical 500-word limit, but shhhhhh. So thank you so much for dealing with my blog habits, I really appreciate your patience. Also, thank you for your dedication to the class throughout the term!! You guys were always a chill presence during classes, and the few chats I had with you were super fun, so thank you for that!!

The next thank you is to the abstract concept of this class’s formatting. You read that right. Thank you for being so flexible and personalizable, and thank you for making me write blogs about my readings. This class made me realise I love writing and blogging about my readings. I genuinely had so much fun writing each and every entry of this website, especially with coming up with the titles for each week. My poor friends were so confused when I’d send them a text late at night telling them to pick one of the 2 unhinged titles I cooked up at any certain point with no context whatsoever (shoutout Ali and Janelle, don’t fight about the name order, I just went alphabetically). So thank you, abstract concept of this class’s formatting.

Speaking of this blog, I need to thank anyone who commented on my posts. You guys made my day many times (Also, the blog awards!! so fucking fun, thank you for that). I also have to quickly thank my therapist, Jackie, for listening to me talk about the blog and all the books we’ve read. Thank you so much Jackie, you’re the best.

Now what would be of these blogs without the books to talk about? Thank you so much to all the books I read, and to the books I didn’t read, too. You taught me a lot over the course of the semester, and it was my pleasure to get to find the little threads that connect you guys together. You also showed me that I can indeed start and finish books that might not appeal to me from a purely premise point of view.

Next up, I have to thank all of my classmates. The classes and discussions would not have been the same without you guys!! Thank you for all your input and for the amazing conversations throughout the semester. All of you write great blogs, and you are all so cool. Yes, even the classmates I didn’t get to chat with.

Finally, and bear with me, I want to thank Julya (aka me).  Thank you for picking this class, thank you for keeping up with all the readings, thank you for braving it out and talking in class until it felt not scary, thank you for letting yourself have fun while doing it. Thank you for letting your actual feelings and opinions out on these blog pages and in class (and not letting the “just tell them what they want to hear” gremlin in your brain win even once over the course of the semester). Depression and anxiety might work hard, but you worked (and keep working) harder, so thank you so much for that.

Sooooooooo, yeah. That’s it. This was my favourite class this semester, and as you can tell, I am very thankful for it. Now, to the actual last thing I want to talk about, what we are all waiting for, the

✨Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!✨

Our tally ended up with the “Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology” side winning by a landslide (if you told week 3 me that, I would’ve laughed at you), and it also ended up proving my theory that only single-word titles exhibited Freudian relationships throughout this term. I have no clue what to do with this information. Last blog post, I was told I have kind of a rigid view on Freud, and for the purposes of the Freud tally, I have to agree. I think in general, my view of Freud is more chill and nuanced, but literally all of my posts are over 1000 words, and if I actually got into it, they would go waaaay too long with the psychology rants. So yeah, I guess for this situation, my lens is rigid, but for the sake of everyone who read and commented, I think that it ended up being a good thing LOL.

Makes Freud proud- 2 (Combray, Agostino)

Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology- 7 (Mad Toy, The Shrouded Woman, The Time of The Doves, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, Money to Burn, The Book of Chameleons, My Brilliant Friend)

I’m so glad I got to experience all of this with you guys. Once again, thank you for joining me on this journey!!!! I wish everyone a wonderful summer, and a lot of success with any and all future endeavours :))

Categories
My Brilliant Friend

The good, the bad, and the ugly of friendships

Hey blog!!

I can’t believe this is the last book I’m reading for this class. Time is so crazy. Anywho, this week’s read was My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. This book follows the very complex friendship between Lila and Lenù, and how their connection progresses as they grow up in a dangerous Naples neighbourhood.

The best way I can describe Lila and Lenù’s friendship is that it’s kind of like an onion. It has many layers, some more superficial than others, and messing around with these layers can be very tense and painful, even if by accident (because onions make you cry no matter what). While there is a lot of support between them, there is a lot of jealousy and tension between the two. It felt as though their friendship traversed the thin line between codependency and symbiosis, with them being good for each other sometimes and harming each other at other times. Regardless, they remain connected to one another.

I think a lot of women can see some of their old friendships within Lila and Lenù’s connection, and I fall under that category. This mix between helping and harming, looking up to and being jealous of, and how these dichotomies still create meaningful experiences throughout our lives is very real. Not every friendship is just positive. I think we learn a lot about how to handle conflict and, in a way, heartbreak, when we have big arguments and problems with our friends. At the end of the day, we just want things to work out,  and we hope the trust we have in one another will help us overcome issues we might have, but sometimes the perception of one another becomes so warped due to your own struggles that the friendship can’t really survive these new differences.

Furthermore, there is the fact that Lenù kind of wants to “be” Lila. I was actually chatting to a friend the other day, and we were talking about how sometimes younger siblings want to be just like their older siblings so that their parents can treat them the way they treated the older sibling. This dynamic is so harmful psychologically because you are basically telling yourself you are not worth being who you are. You end up later in life with no idea of who you are and what you enjoy, because you were so busy trying to be someone else. I feel like with Lenù wanting to be like Lila, we see some of that. Lenù wants to be seen and reacted to like Lila is by her peers, so she decides the easiest way to do that is to be Lila. But Lenù can never be Lila, just like a younger sibling can never be the older sibling, because no matter how much you try to become like someone else, ignoring who you are will always catch up to you.

This was a long but very cool read!! I really liked how the book portrayed the not-so-pretty aspects of friendships, since they happen to everyone and yet aren’t talked about much. I can’t believe this is my last read for this class!! I’d say it was a great novel to wrap things up.

Last but oh so certainly not least, we have the final entry to my

Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!

This week, we had many complex relationships between characters, but no Freudian ones!! I can’t believe how far we’ve come. This means My Brilliant Friend is our final entry into the “Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology” category, officially ending the Freud tally. And my “the only titles that can make Freud proud are the single word ones” theory survived the whole course!!! That is very interesting, but I don’t know what to do with this information LOL

✨Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!✨

Makes Freud proud- 2 (Combray, Agostino)

Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology- 7 (Mad Toy, The Shrouded Woman, The Time of The Doves, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, Money to Burn, The Book of Chameleons, My Brilliant Friend)

Thank you so much for reading, see you guys next week!!!

Categories
The Book of Chameleons

Why be a fly on the wall when you can be an osga (Eulálio eu te amo <33)

Oi blog!! Hope this past week was good :))

This week, I had the pleasure of reading The Book of Chameleons. When I first picked this book from the syllabus, a small part of my mind started the debate of “should I read this book in English or in Portuguese??” While you may think my answer would be “Easy!! I’ll read it in Portuguese because that’s my native language!!”, you unfortunately thought wrong, and here’s why.

Contrary to how the changes between British, North American, and Canadian English are pretty minor and usually manifest when talking about the little things, the difference between Portugal Portuguese and Brasilian Portuguese is much bigger. We have the difference in the little things, but (in the simplest, crudest terms possible), basically, Portugal Portuguese is the older, fancier, more formal brother to the slower, chiller, and more “changed” Brasilian Portuguese. This is due to how the other languages that surrounded Brasil and Portugal changed the Portuguese. So while we have posh Portuguese in Portugal, we have a Portuguese with gingado (groovy, with swing) because of the many Indigenous and African languages we incorporated into our Portuguese. So when I first picked Agualusa’s novel, I started to wonder what Angolan Portuguese is like.

I debated for a while and ultimately decided to read the book in Portuguese, which was the best decision ever. So I am sorry to say this, but I lied to you. I did not read The Book of Chameleons; I read O Vendedor de Passados, which translates to “the seller of pasts”. I am so grateful I went for the Portuguese version because I had so much fun reading. Turns out Angolan Portuguese is very similar to Portugal Portuguese, meaning if you were an osga on my wall, you would’ve caught me giggling at my Kindle while reading some of the fanciest Portuguese I’ve seen since I finished high school in 2023 (I was also giggling because apparently there are slight spelling differences for words, so I had a great time finding all of those). But there are also some Brasil-ities to Angolan Portuguese, which I saw through the incorporation of originally indigenous words into their everyday vocabulary.

An example of these differences that made my reading experience so fun was the word “osga”, which you have seen twice in this blog. So…. What is an osga you ask?? An osga is a “house gecko”, or what I’m supposed to know as a “lagartixa”, but I know as a “Mariana”. The book in Portuguese kept using the word osga, and I loved it because it sounds fun. Your next question should be, “Julya…. what?? Mariana?”, which is very fair. So let’s talk memories.

(a Mariana :33 image link)

From the Julya POV– Ever since I was a kid, we’ve had little lagartixas/osgas/house geckos around my house. I do not remember how this started, but I’m pretty sure what happened was that my dad didn’t want me to be scared of the lagartixas, so he named one Mariana. And the name stuck. So every time I see a lagartixa/osga/house gecko to this day, I call every single one of them Mariana.

From the Eulálio (may he rest in peace and shade) POV– the book discusses memories in such an interesting way. As a Psych student, I know that you can’t really trust memories, since every time you remember something, you are actually remembering something slightly different than what happened (memories are unfortunately not reliable). And the book does mention this when talking about how Félix Ventura has “false memories sometimes – we all do, don’t we?”(116). Which I think is one of the reasons the premise of this novel appealed to me so much. Humans aren’t really capable of remembering their pasts properly (not talking to the eidetic memory folks), so a man who can sell you a past is quite an interesting story.

The novel poses an important point about how, no matter how much you change, despite trying to forget and distance yourself from your past, it’s still yours. And it will never leave you. Very a la Undertale (or the other way around, since this launched first),

(image link)

Furthermore, the novel tells us that even if we forget our past and our actions, they still ripple out and have consequences. José Buchmann/Pedro Gouveia wanted to forget his past, and yet he ends up face to face with it when he has dinner with Ângela Lúcia. Which, side note, WHAT WAS THAT REVEAL?!?!? I loved it, the moment I put the pieces together, my internal monologue went “waitWAIT OH MY GOD what I would do to be a fly on that wall….. WAIT I AM ON THE WALL. I AM AN OSGA ON THE WALL. HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME”. So thank you, Agualusa, for letting me cross off “being a fly on the wall” off my “this can literally never happen but ???maybe????” bucket list.

Another interesting concept the book touches on is the “truth”. I would love to dive into the philosophical talks of what really is the “truth”, and also what really is “history”, if not the point of view of the most privileged. But I will not talk about it because otherwise this blog will be too long lol. I do want to mention that the way they talked about lies reminded me a lot of the ending section of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, how thin the balance between a truth and a lie really is.

Overall, this book is definitely one of my top 3 reads for this class. I adored the point of view so much, being an osca was so much fun. It kind of reminded me of the point of view we take in The Shrouded Woman, since in both novels, we are observing a life from a small distance after finishing our own. The narration was awesome, the characters were super interesting, and I had a genuinely amazing time reading this novel in my native language. I’ll end the book talk by asking for a silent moment for Félix’s dead dogs and for our GOAT Eulálio.

 

Now that the book talk is done, I have to do my obligatory

✨✨BRASIL MENTION CARALHO!! NÚMERO UM DO MUNDO PORRAAAA!!! WOOOOO!!✨✨

9 ideias de Olimpíadas memes/e de repente patriota patriota | memes, brasil copa do mundo, seleção brasileira

(image link)

Brasil was mentioned so much in this book, it was so cool. I loved that very much. My country is so awesome, I love being Brasilian.

My question this week is– on page 101, José Buchmann tells Félix to “receive an affectionate greeting from your true friend”. In Portuguese, the sentence is “aceite um abraço do amigo sincero”, which literally translates to “accept a hug from a sincere/honest friend”. Is it fair for us to say José Buchmann is a sincere/honest friend since he is lying about his identity and past?? Could it even be called lying if someone genuinely believed that something was a fact from their past, kind of like the minister deciding what Félix told him was literally what happened??

Last but certainly not least, now onto what everyone is definitely waiting for, the

Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!

This week, we had another normal relationship?!?! The balance of this class is healing. And my “the only titles that can make Freud proud are the single word ones” theory survives another week.

✨Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!✨

Makes Freud proud- 2 (Combray, Agostino)

Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology- 6 (Mad Toy, The Shrouded Woman, The Time of The Doves, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, Money to Burn, The Book of Chameleons)

 

Obrigada por ler, até semana que vem!!! Tchau :))

Categories
Money to Burn

Dear Argentinian writers, you write wonderful books, but you do know you can write about more than crime gangs right??

Hi blog!!

Last week was my week off from reading for this class, and it was both weird and relaxing. Weird because I got used to reading a whole book every weekend, and relaxing because I had 3 midterms the week before and my Latin 301 midterm last Friday, so my brain desperately needed the break lol. Anywaaays, the reading this week was Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia, and I really liked it.

Now, before we get into my thoughts, it is my duty as a Brasilian from BraSil (yes, with an S, it’s not my fault they decided to change the S into a Z in English) to say,

✨✨BRASIL MENTION VAMO PORRAA✨✨

Estreia do Brasil na Copa do Mundo vira meme nas redes sociais

(image source)

Were the mentions of Brasil particularly good? Kind of. The gang was planning to escape to Rio Grande do Sul through the Rio Prata, so while you could argue it was fucked up since they were planning to run there, you could also say Brasil was kind of the light at the end of their tunnel, you know?? There was also the maconha scene, which I laughed at when I read it.

As a Brasilian, it is also my duty to shit on Argentinians at any given point in time because Brasil is just better (please note that this is a mutual shit-talking situation, I am not just shit-talking Argentinians willy nilly here). But for the sake of this post, just like I did with Arlt’s Mad Toy, I will leave the Argentina bad mouthing aside.

Mentions of my homeland aside, I had such a fun time reading this book!! The pacing of the book was so cool, and the constant perspective changes in tense moments really made me feel as though I was watching a docuseries on the events of this book (Which, after searching something from the book up, I came to find out they made this book a movie!! I will definitely be watching that). I will admit these same constant perspective changes confused me quite a bit in the beginning, but once I got into the groove of the book, I really enjoyed them. In general, this book felt much shorter than it actually was to me. It really managed to steal my attention and run with it, much like our band of criminals ran to Uruguay.

Let’s actually talk about said band of criminals. We have

  • Twisty Bazan, for whom I honestly don’t really have a proper opinion. Sorry dude, I was too focused on everyone else.
  • Malito, Mister Little Evil, who just abandons the Twins and Crow. He was a very Intriguing character since he was akin to a puppet master, also being able to prepare everyone for what would happen next. I understand why he left the three hanging; he had to save his own ass. I wasn’t mad, per se. My emotional journey went about the same way as the journey of the other three criminals when it came to realizing Malito was not coming. We all kept thinking ök when he shows up, blablabla”, and also asking ourselves where we were. Then, by the time we realized he was not coming, we were too busy trying to stay alive from the police antics.
  • Mereles, the Crow, and his trinity of driving, fucking, and doing crazy tranquilizers. He was a pretty cool character. I found him interesting and fun. He brought the perspective back to what was happening in the crime side of the book, instead of having our perspectives be focused on the twins and their relationship (although I would not have minded the other perspective, I thought the twins’ relationship was so interesting)
  • Franco Brignone, the Kid, and one-half of the Twins. He abandoned his set life as the son of a rich man to turn to crime, and reading his perspective was very fun. I really liked how we got to see Kid as his own individual person (like with Margarida), but also how he and Gaucho were two sides of the same coin. I really liked his character and role in the story, too, and his death and its impact were (unfortunately) amazing to read.
  • Gaucho Dorda, Blonde Gaucho, the other half of the Twins. He was by far my favourite character. Maybe because, as a psych student, I found Piglia’s portrayal of his mental illness and aphasia really interesting. Maybe because he was the book, having been the one to survive the standoff, and being so crucial to every step of the plan. In general, I can’t really pinpoint why his character stuck with me, but it did. I found him almost fascinating. He was my favourite character by kilometers, and I would love to talk a lot more about him (but I have a word limit I already blew past so I shall not do that here)

So this group of guys commits a crazy heist, flees from Argentina to Uruguay, and eventually, all except Malito die. The in between of these events tells such an alluring story that touches on everything from religion to so much drug use to a very interesting subplot of sexuality. I would like to re-read this book, trying only to pay attention to the sexuality and queerness aspects of the story, maybe I’ll do that another time. I will say that the relationship between the twins was so captivating, seeing them complete each other as people, as lovers, and as criminals was so cool to read. And just in general, I wish I could talk about the themes of possession and “seeing” in this book, but I don’t have the word wiggle room for that. I also wish I could talk about the scene of them burning the money and its implications, it was such a sick scene.

Overall, Money to Burn was such an awesome read, with a quick pace and yet a very deep story of connection on multiple levels. Piglia and his very ACAB mentality brought forth a very captivating story with so many layers I want to go back and analyze.

I leave you guys with one question- Who was your favourite crew member and why??

Last but certainly not least, we have this week’s

Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!

This week, we had straight relationships, we had gay relationships, and we did NOT have freudian relationships!! Another addition to the “Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology” category, and this continues to support my “only single word titles portray relationships Freud would be proud of in this class” theory.

✨Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!✨

Makes Freud proud- 2 (Combray, Agostino)

Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology- 5 (Mad Toy, The Shrouded Woman, The Time of The Doves, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller, Money to Burn)

 

Thank you for reading, see you next time :))

Categories
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

Did not expect to be called out on page 6 of this book and yet here we are

Hi blog!! Hope we are all surviving midterm season o7

This week, the reading was If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. It was tough picking between Calvino and Lispector, because on one side, I read Calvino’s The Cloven Viscount in high school and thought it was super cool, but on the other side, Clarice Lispector is an icon in Brasil and I didn’t want to disrespect my home country. Ultimately, Calvino won this battle because finding someone to discuss Lispector at home is much easier than finding someone willing to read the insanity that is Calvino. Both books I’ve read by him were insane in the best way possible, and I really liked both of them. But you guys don’t need to hear about my IB reading adventures,  so let’s talk about this novel.

The format of this book was so fun to experience. Both the chapter divisions and the narration style were so unique and fun, I really enjoyed it. The narrator was awesome, it felt as if my inner monologue was trying to multitask DM-ing a D&D campaign while doing what it’s supposed to do. I loved how dynamic the book and its narration felt, and I also really appreciated how easy it was to slip into the role of Reader.

I did not expect the book to be able to create good side characters that we could follow along with its funky formatting, and yet the characters of Ludmilla (The Other Reader) and Ermes Marana were very well fleshed out. I found Ludmilla super intriguing, much like the Reader. I especially appreciated how, whenever we stumbled upon a new book, she would redefine what reading meant to her and what she was looking to read. On the other hand, Ermes Marana was both an incredibly confusing and completely clear-cut character for me. He was the master of fakeness, and he was always too quick to catch (I see the H-Ermes joke there, Calvino), but he always went about making things so confusing (which makes sense considering he was trying to make people not believe the “truth”). The reveal of Marana being interested and driven to do what he does by Ludmilla all along was so cool, I definitely need to process the book a bit more before I can talk about it tho.

The best thing about this book for me by far was the dialogue between the narrator and me. On page 6, they go “[…]you rest your elbows on the desk, you rest your temples against your hands, curled into fists, […]”. I was literally sitting at my desk in that exact position. I felt like that one John Travolta looking around meme from Pulp Fiction. There were other moments during my reading where I was thinking something and the narrator would comment on it, and I had to go “wait, this book is not sentient, how did it do that?! SICK”. Needless to say, the reading experience for this one was awesome.

Overall, this was such an amazing read. I am so happy I went with this path for the week. I have never read anything quite like this book, and I’m sure I’ll never read anything quite like it again, which is upsetting but exciting that I got to experience it in the first place. I also think this book is such an important message about how sometimes you start something in your life, and you have to keep starting new things to actually move things along, instead of starting and finishing something, then moving on to start something else. Lastly, my high school Portuguese teacher would have such a blast dissecting this book in class, so this blog is dedicated to Bulga :))

I leave you guys with this question: what do you guys take from this quote- “She explains that she believes she has understood this: the truth of literature consists only in the physicality of the act of writing.” (pg 189)??? I thought it was an interesting take, especially considering what we discussed in the first 2 classes this semester!!

Last but not least, what everyone looks forward to, the

Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!

This week, we had a normal relationship?? A wild concept for this RMST class. Even though Ludmilla had her past issues and the whole Ermes Marana thing, ultimately Reader and Other Reader had a nice, healthy relationship, which is something I did not expect to write this semester. This means If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller gets to join the “Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology” category!!! My single-word titles making Freud proud trend continues this week

✨Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!✨

Makes Freud proud- 2 (Combray, Agostino)

Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology- 4 (Mad Toy, The Shrouded Woman, The Time of The Doves, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller)

 

Thank you for reading, see you next time :))

Categories
The Time of The Doves

We need to give Quimet the Prometheus treatment but substitute the eagle with a bunch of doves and have them just go crazy on him

Hi there blog!! Hope the reading break went well :DD

Rodoreda’s The Time of the Doves provided me with a very convoluted(? I can’t think of a better word) reading experience. Strap in because I forgot we should keep the blogs short and just went off (I am so sorry, but also I have no regrets since I had fun writing this).

First off, I really liked the lens through which the book was told. Rodoreda managed to make Natalia’s experiences feel as close to personal to the reader as she could get by what I will describe as “making the reader be a fly on the wall of Natalia’s brain”. What I mean by that is that the perspective of the book makes it feel as though we are going through this story as if we were a little guy on Natasha’s Inside Out emotions team (Inside Out the Disney movie). It felt like-

I can’t think of an emotion that accurately describes what it felt like to watch Natalia’s life. The best way I can describe it is through a quote. This is the part of the book where they are looking for the lost key, and Natalia says, “As long as we thought we’d lost it, it was like we had lost it.” (pg 53). It was excruciating to watch Natalia make herself into nothing because she is sure that “As long as we stay married and we thought everything was okay and happy, it was like we were okay and happy”. It feels insane to say this, but I felt as though the weight Natalia lived with was lifted by a LOT when the revolution started. Her battles transitioned from being fought internally and secretly to being fought externally and with others, and you could really tell that having Quimet not focus on being a piece of shit to her gave her soul some lightness.

Before I transition to rip a new one into Quimet, I want to mention the truly insane metaphors in this book. Holy shit. That’s the only way I can explain how amazing these were. The doves symbolize so many different things throughout the book, one of the big ones being Mr. Asshole himself. But I also think the doves represented Natalia’s spirit. She was free before she met Quitem, and after their marriage, her freedom and happiness got stripped away. When they mention building the dove enclosure/cage/house, my first thought was “welp, there goes her freedom, they are literally making sure she/the doves can’t fly. He just wants absolute control over them”. Then my point got stronger when Quitem panics about opening the cages for the first time, thinking the doves would fly and never come back. He is so worried, his control will slip, but unfortunately, both for the doves and for Natalia, they know nothing better than to be under his control, so they come back.

The metaphor I loved the most and found the most masterful and interesting is the tapeworm/umbilical cord/termite/bellybutton/egg shaking pipeline/connection. GOD, that was so amazing to weave together as I read. Throughout the whole book, we see constant imagery about things being consumed from the inside out (through the tapeworm and a bit with the termites), and how the outside person and the inside person are crucially connected (through the umbilical cord, the bellybutton, and the egg shaking). And we see these things through this weird pipeline I mentioned. The reason I thought this was genius is because this is exactly what is happening to Natalia. She enters this truly horrible marriage, and she gets abused and put down and diminished over and over and over again, which starts to destroy her from the inside out. She never shows Quimet she is struggling; she just lets it fester, growing and growing like the tapeworm. So then, when she sees things that reflect who she was before this started, showing her that who she was and who she’s unintentionally become are one and the same, she can’t handle it. So she shakes the eggs. She would rather make sure no being could ever get close to the situation she was in when this all started than let them be alive in the first place.

While I could talk about metaphors for a while, I have business to attend to. And that business is talking about Quimet. Specifically about how much he was a horrible piece of shit. He is so possessive of Natalia, it feels like he does not see her as human. She is his possession, she does things for him and needs nothing in return, she is his doll,  his servant to command. Expecting anything of him is truly preposterous. It pissed me off. I hate him. Reading about an abusive partner is never easy, but this motherfucker really got on my nerves. He might’ve been the one to have the tapeworm, but he was the literal tapeworm in Natalia’s life. Fuck that guy.

Lastly, the one non-story-related thing that had me genuinely losing it throughout this book (besides her piece of shit husband as mentioned previously) was that, for some reason, the formatting of this book made me feel as though I was reading a constant anxiety attack. I read the book in one sitting in 2:30 hours, and I genuinely think I was breathing too fast but not fast enough to be hyperventilating for literally all but that last 30 minutes. It was extremely uncomfortable, and I genuinely almost DNF the book multiple times because of this. But I made it out alive and survived to the end. I got to see Natalia get the life she deserved :))

Overall, this book was pretty tough to get through, but a very rewarding read nonetheless. I really liked the lens of the story, even though I was bordering on an accidental anxiety attack with the formatting. The story is tragic, but not every moment in life can be beautiful. I will leave you guys with a question: what did you guys interpret from all the tapeworm/umbilical cord/termite/bellybutton/egg shaking business? Did you feel they were connected like I did, or did you have a totally different POV??

Last but oh so certainly not least (just kidding, there’s a PS section this time oops), it’s time for everyone’s favourite part of my blog, the

Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!

This week, we were spared from parental issues, mostly because we don’t get to see much of Natalia’s parents, and we are actually the parents. Even then, all parent-child relationships would have disappointed Freud, meaning they were normal in Freudian standards. This means The Time of The Doves gets to join the “Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology” category!!! I am seeing a trend of single-word titles making Freud proud and multiple-word titles disappointing him, so let’s see if that trend keeps up later.

✨Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!✨

Makes Freud proud- 2 (Combray, Agostino)

Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology- 3 (Mad Toy, The Shrouded Woman, The Time of The Doves)

 

PS- 4 things I couldn’t figure out how to include in the blog that I HAD to mention

1- The alternate title for this post was “Quimet?? More like Quit’em, get oUT OF THERE NATALIA”

2- When she was talking about killing her kids?? So that they didn’t have to suffer?!?!?!!?! holy fucking shit that was tough to process.

3- to end on a light note, we have a Father Joan Banger quote, cuz he called all of us out with this one – “I know young people are high-spirited. They want to live and live fast . . . but a life, if it’s really going to be a life, has to be lived slowly.” (pg 39)

4- If you saw this post as it went up and caught my message of me tweaking out at 11pm on Sunday over the image breaking and deleting 2/3 of my blog, No you didn’t. I had the post ready early this time, but that god-forsaken meme broke my blog and my spirits.

See yall next time!! :))

 

Categories
Agostino

“We shouldn’t be fucking MILFs, it ruined my life”- a MILF’s son’s memoir

Hellooo once again blog :)) (please know I went a medium bit above the word limit, so this is a longer one, sorry not sorry)

This week’s read was Agostino by Alberto Moravia, and I can openly admit I went into this book with the wrong expectations. When I read the blurb in the “choose your own adventure” page on our website, I was like “Oh cool!! Agostino is gonna figure out he is gay!!! Ok Moravia, very progressive writing for your time there, I see you!!”. Oh, how I was wrong. I was so, SO wrong.

So yeah, little rich boy Agostino is head over heels in love with his mother.  Just completely enamored. I thought Combray was bad when it came to the mommy issues, but Agostino tramples that. Multiple times over. The whole book follows the idea that Agostino used to see his mother as something akin to a saint, but with this vacation, he realizes his mom is a very desirable woman to the people around him, and apparently to him as well. Everyone wants to fuck his mom, and the book is 102 pages of Agostino realizing that apparently so does he. I have to admit, the journey for this kid to get to this conclusion is full of some very well-written emotional turmoil, but that doesn’t make this any less weird. I mean, it will never be not-weird to read about how he goes from “wow my mom is so beautiful everyone should be jealous that I row her boat” to “I hate my mom >:((” to then go “oh shit I guess yeah, my mom is a Woman and hot, and I guess I am indeed attracted to her”… But at least its well written!!

I *have* to mention how sex is depicted in this book. It’s depicted as something wrong, and as something that should be illegal and hidden, and yet happens anyway. We have mom and pretty guy literally fucking on the boat while Agostino is there (which by the way, WHAT THE FUCK.), then we have the boy gang being in charge of teaching Agostino what sex is after bullying the shit out of him. Which leads us to Saro and the fucking boat. WHAT ARE WE DOING? Why did my only hope for adult supervision of these troubled boys turn out to be a PERVERT?!?!?! Man….. You’d think we’d stop there. We don’t! Because we have the whole brother sequence of events to go through still. All of this goes to say that the way intimacy and sex are depicted throughout this book makes it seem so taboo, which I think was an interesting choice.

The last thing I want to mention is how innocence is depicted. Throughout the whole book, Agostino is set on not being a boy but being a strong, not innocent, capital m Man. And he almost feels anguished when he fails to be that. He keeps hanging out with these boys who are so clearly being horrible to him because he so desperately wants to grow up. He wants his mom to see him like she sees the pretty man. Which is incredibly Oedipus complex-y, which Freud would be very proud of. But what really gets me is that at the end of chapter 3, we see that there is a part of him that does not want to be a Man. He realizes how much of a toll growing up takes, and he says that “The dark realization came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn’t imagine when it would end” (67). Yes, puberty fucking sucks, but not as bad as Agostino is making himself believe it is. But then again, I wasn’t a teenage boy in love with my mom when puberty hit me, so maybe the death of innocence would really seem like the end of the world if that was the case. But overall, the depiction of innocence and the loss of that is such a key and interesting line to follow throughout the story.

As you can probably tell, this book was a rollercoaster. I was constantly asking myself, “What the fuck is going on right now?”, and then continuing to read with my eyebrows increasingly higher on my forehead and my jaw dropping increasingly lower. But it was an interesting read. Not my favourite so far, but definitely an interesting experience. I leave you with this final question: What the fuck is up with these older stories and having little boys be in love with their moms? Why were we doing that?

Now, before I go, I need to tell you that the title fight for this blog was very tight, and the runner-up was “Freud must have been so upset he died 5 years before this book was published”. With Freud in mind, I decided to start the-

Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!

This is where I’ll be tallying all the books I read for this class based on whether they would make Freud proud or not, aka if they present “little boy has a weirdly romantic and sexual relationship with his mom” syndrome.

So yeah!! Thank you for reading, I’ll see yall in the next one :))

✨Freud Tally!!!!!!!!!✨

Makes Freud proud- 2 (Combray, Agostino)

Knows Freud had no credentials to do psychology- 2 (Mad Toy, The Shrouded Woman)

Categories
The Shrouded Woman

Someone needs to make a tragic telenovela inspired by this book ASAP

Hi blog!!

Bombal’s Shrouded Woman made me feel like I was back at home, being made to watch the evening novelas (the Portuguese word for telenovelas) when my grandma visited our house. What an experience!!

I need to start off by saying that the point of view from which we read this book is genuinely one of the coolest POVs I’ve read from. The changes in time throughout the scenes confused me a bit, but I got used to it. It is such a creative choice, and it works so beautifully.

Onto my thoughts on the actual story. Throughout my reading, I felt like I was watching different characters go through very similar, if not the same exact, cycles our main character goes through in her life. For example, we have Ana Maria and Ricardo’s relationship repeating itself through Anita and Rodolfo. For Ana Maria and Ricardo, we had a teenage infatuation that ended up being one-sided on Ana Maria’s part. But, since they fooled around, Ana Maria got pregnant with his baby. She then tries to use that as leverage to get Ricardo to take responsibility and marry her, hoping he will love her the same way she loves him. In this case, Ricardo claims he has no responsibility for the baby and leaves for Europe, leaving Ana Maria heartbroken, which leads to her losing the baby. On the other hand, we have Anita, Ana Maria’s daughter, who is in love with Don Rodolfo. When he falls in love with Maria Griselda, Anita cannot accept that, so she forces herself onto him and ends up pregnant. Unlike Ricardo, Rodolfo takes responsibility and ends up married to Anita, even if it’s a miserable, loveless marriage. We see this idea of cycles repeating themselves throughout the different generations of Ana Maria’s family over and over in the book, and I found that to be incredibly interesting. This repeating of cycles also really helped to emphasize how important each of these expereinces were to Ana Maria. I thought this was an awesome way to weave a connection between these characters’ lives beyond their biological connection.

But this is not a happy book. In fact, it deals with incredibly heavy topics like suicide and rape. And yet again, we see these topics being emphasized by having them appear in both Ana Maria’s life and the next generation’s lives as well. For instance, we see suicide through Ana Maria almost killing herself after Ricardo rejects her, then Fred’s wife, Silvia, straight up shooting herself in front of him because of Maria Griselda (which, by the way, Maria Griselda is such a tragic character, oh my god, I feel so bad for that woman). Seeing these tragedies repeat themselves feels like watching a horrible cycle repeat itself, and you have no power to stop it. But it also makes for such an interesting reading experience, because Bombal really forces you to recall the previous experiences and to watch as Ana Maria sees things happen again through the lenses of her own children. It was very smart writing, but a very tragic story.

Overall, I liked this read. I do have to admit I searched up a family tree for the characters to make sure I was interpreting everyone correctly, but even then, it was a very interesting novella.

Now, most importantly, as the title of this blogpost suggests, someone needs to make this into one of those ultra-dramatic, streams at 10pm on cable TV, and all the aunties and grandmas watch it, telenovela (also known as a soap opera). The emotional whiplash of some of these chapters was truly insane (like the moment where Ana Maria is saying she hates her husband, and then proceeds to go “ohmygod he has a WRINKLE?!”), and that one scene where Ana Maria and Antonio are arguing? That would have the aunties going CRAZY in front of their tvs and their crochets. AND ALSO the amount of betrayal and cheating? insane. So please, if anyone knows any Latin telenovela producers, let them know this book might be a gold mine for a series.

I leave y’all with this last question- do you guys think Bombal intended to make these coincidental events something akin to a cycle, or do you think they were just coincidences looking to make the reader feel ‘nostalgic’ about previous happenings in the book??

Thank you for reading :))

Categories
Mad Toy

What did the “coming-of-age story” genre do to Robert Arlt that made him come out swinging like that?! and what is this arsonist child doing here?!!

Hi again blog :))

Thank the heavens this week the reading had normal lenght sentences (looking at you, Combray). I absolutely adored reading Mad Toy. The pacing of the story was amazing, and I really felt as if I was looking at snapshots of Silvio’s life. I thought I would feel the gaps in the story, but in reality, the passage of time between one chapter and another did not hinder my reading experience at all. In fact, I really enjoyed these time intervals.

Roberto Arlt really heard the sentence “coming-of-age story” and said “BET”. He expertly portrays how a person’s perspectives and ideals change as they grow older, and how, as much as you can denounce ever feeling a certain way when talking about the past, those ideals never completely leave you. Silvio’s growth from being certain his future was with his crime gang, to going through the shttiest job ever, to getting his first reality check through his gay roommate, to being okay with his life selling paper AND being on the other side of his earlier life dreams, is such a beautiful depiction of what every teen goes through. We always think adult life is all daisies and roses, and then we get our metaphorical asses handed to us, and we get reality checked to the next plane of existence, so that we can get up and learn to be okay with the fact that life does suck sometimes, but you have to try to make the best of it. Everyone needs to have their crime gang go on break to eventually figure out that selling paper is okay for now, you know?

I had a delightful time seeing Buenos Aires through Silvio’s eyes. Not because he had an easy life, or because he was a particularly happy person (that man needs a therapist yesterday), but because I was fascinated to watch his perspectives change with time and experience. Silvio is a genius. He is incredibly smart, he knows so much about maths and sciences, and yet he is stuck learning a trade to make a living instead of being able to do what he truly loves, which is writing, studying, and inventing. This initial shock, which morphs into acceptance, is something I once again think so many teens go through. It is still heartbreaking to see Silvio get put down over and over again, but it also made me think that so many people probably feel seen by what he went through. And for these people, hearing how, at the end of the day, Silvio still finds joy in his life, is something incredibly important.

I want to talk about so many other things because I genuinely adored this book, but the last thing I will mention is how awesome the blend of varieties of Spanish and other Romance languages was. As someone who went to school with people who spoke all kinds of Spanish, that really made me feel at home lol.

I also have to mention arsonist Silvio. I know boys always have that one thing they hyperfixate on as teens, but having that be building cannons (yes, multiple) seems a bit concerning. Still loved that though, arsonist Silvio was very fun.

Stealing is no stranger to Silvio, and Silvio is no stranger to stealing. But Mad Toy shows us how even if you know how to steal, having everything be stolen from you fundamentally changes you and your morals.

I am very glad I read this book, it was awesome!! I leave you guys with one final question: What are your thoughts on Rengo being a metaphor for chapter one Silvio? Cuz I thought he was one hell of a metaphor, and the fact that Silvio turned him in is what really solidifies an important part of his growing up story.

Thanks for reading!!! :)))

Categories
Combray

Hrooonk, mimimimimimi… or not?

Hello again blog :))

So….. Combray huh….. When I read the part of the introduction that says Proust’s texts are known to be complex because of his “famously long sentences”, I braced myself for a text full of sentences that an English teacher would be disappointed at. But reading this book and seeing one sentence span 10 lines on page 12 of reading, I realized I grossly underestimated what kind of monster “famously long sentences” was warning me about. The number of clauses within one sentence would get an English teacher to retire. This was a tough read, but not because I did not find the story compelling, but because the text never managed to capture my attention because of how it went on and on and on…. So I feel like I remember the first half of the book a lot better than the second half, since I was actively forcing myself to lock in and pay attention. Nonetheless, here’s what I thought about Combray-

This book managed to communicate the theme of recognition in a way I have never seen before (pun intended). It discussed how the small changes to something or somewhere can completely warp your perception, and you may no longer feel safe in that place because of that. We see that right at the beginning of the book, when he very extensively talks about the light figures spinning around his room. He complains that these lights sometimes make the room unfamiliar to him, changing the space beyond his scope of recognition. Introducing the theme of recognition by explaining what happens when it’s not there truly blew my mind. 

Further into recognition, I have to mention the infamous Madelaine scene. Proust managed to articulate what a sudden burst of memories feels like beautifully through this scene. It reminded me of what it feels like to sit with your friends, and hear them tell a story you can’t remember, but it slowly comes back to you as they continue, and suddenly you remember everything and go OOOOOOOOOH YEEEAAAAAHH THAT HAPPENED. 

One thing Proust did that impressed me was that he constantly called back to light. From the light figures in his room to how the sun hit the church windows, he constantly brings attention to how the sun and light affect the environment around him. I would say he did it subtly, but when you write sentences as long as he did, things have a hard time staying subtle. 

Something else that really impressed me was just how sad everything was. He was happy to remember Combray, but so many of the things he describes are tinted with sadness and sorrow, including how he felt. I couldn’t tell if everything was that sad because he was just depressed, or if it was both depression and pure sorrow. 

I feel like maybe he kept bringing our attention to the light as a contrast to all this sadness. Almost like the light at the end of the tunnel, the goods and the bads. For example, the light figures were in his room because even though he was upset his mother was not with him, he ultimately had good memories of the space. 

Last thing before I go, I need to bring up the kissing mommy and mommy tucking me in thing. What the fuck…? Just… What?? Look, at first I was like “okay it’s weird, but he just reeeally wants to be tucked in”, but then he goes on to talk about M Swann, and we think he moved on, but then he closes that out with “but I didn’t like that he came over because mommy wouldn’t tuck me in and kiss me goodnight” OUT OF NOWHERE. I was speechless and pissed off. Just, what….? 

Anyways, I am grateful this is apparently the toughest read of the semester, but it was still a very cool read!! Awesome motifs, but we need a moment of silence for the English teachers out there. 

 

 

 

Alrighty, see ya next time!!! :)))

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