Hello Everybody,
My name is Kelly and I am a 3rd year student doing a combined major in Economics and Political Science. As used as we are to introducing ourselves that way, I doubt that fact is that integral to my self introduction especially for this class. So here’s some other facts that you might find more interesting about me. Some of my favourite books I have ever read are Circe, The Handmaids Tale, and The Giving Tree. I don’t know if The Giving Tree has any business being here but it was rated very highly on my Goodreads list so I thought to include it.
I have taken a class with Jon before (Span 312) so my expectations for this class are a lot more adjusted- I foresee a lot of exposure to texts rooted in various regions featuring different kinds of stories- some great, most weird, very few unenjoyable. On that note, I am excitedly expecting a lot less magical realism (which I am scared will be replaced by surrealism) and a lot less texts similar to Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. Hopefully. For those unaware what that book is about, just know that I’ll bet my entire life savings ($2) that you will be confused by the book at some point. For this class, Im really excited to read The Lover and The Book of Chameleons. I’ve heard things (not all good) about The Lover before so I’m excited for the opportunity to be able to discuss it with other people and see what they think. On the other hand, the Book of Chameleons has a very interesting plot setting so I’m excited to see how it’s going to play out.
In the lecture, the question mentioned was “Where is the Romance World?”. My first instinctual thought was what even is the Romance World? Is it just an amalgamation of countries that have linguistic ties to an ancestor language that is dead now? If it’s that simple then it should just be those countries geographically. However that seems hardly significant. So I guess the best answer is that the Romance world exists in our heads, at the very least. In response to the conversation video, I’m excited to hear the conversations between members of the unruly family, and hopefully most of them will be interesting.
My question to everyone this week is: What book are you the most excited for and why? Or if you aren’t excited about any of them, which one were you the most set on avoiding and what was the reason?