why am i sad this is over…

It feels so weird to be done. This class helped me push up my yearly reading goal on Goodreads and now, I won’t have a constant recommendation on what to read anymore. No joke, this class made me think of joining a book club because reading the novels and discussing them in class was my favourite part of it.

What I didn’t expect was how much these books would start to feel connected, even though they come from completely different places and styles. A lot of them deal with the theme of identity, but not in a simple, straightforward way. In these books, the theme of identity is always changing and shifting depending on your environment, your relationships, and the stories you tell yourself. In The Book of Chameleons, identity is literally something you can buy and rewrite, which makes it feel unstable and almost fake. But then in My Brilliant Friend, identity is shaped through obsession and comparison, where Lenù is constantly defining herself through Lila. It’s less about choosing who you are and more about shaping yourself based on the people around you.

The theme of power and control also showed up in multiple ways. In The Impatient, it is very direct, with the idea of “munyal” forcing women into patience and silence. The Impatient was a very suffocating read at times because of the emphasis on patience, despite it not improving the women’s lives one bit. However, in Nada, the control is quieter and more internal. Even though these books are so different, they all show how limited people can feel within their own lives, whether its because of society, relationships, or even themselves.

If I had to pick my absolute favourite book this semester, it would be My Brilliant Friend. None of the books over 200 pages made me as invested as this one. It was so intense and obsessive and despite Lenù writing the book almost 50 years after the incidents of her childhood, she remembered her feelings about Lila throughout. Their friendship was crazy and now, as I am halfway through the second book in the series (The Story of a New Name), it’s is just getting more intense.

Some other honourable mentions for my favourite book are Nada, The Trenchcoat (because of how easy it was to read and how quickly I got through it), and Money to Burn.

Overall, this course didn’t just make me read more, it made me read differently. I started paying more attention to patterns across texts, especially near the end of the course. It was so interesting to me to see how differently these characters are shaped by their worlds, and how stories can feel completely unrealistic but still say something very real. I think that it what I’m going to take with me, following the end of this course.