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Plot Twist I Actually Learned Something

It actually feels kind of unreal that this is the last post because I swear I was just complaining about having to read a book a week and now I’m lowkey sad it’s over. Like why did this class trick me into becoming someone who enjoys reading consistently. I didn’t expect that at all. What started as “okay let me just get this done” slowly turned into me actually looking forward to reading because it felt like a break from everything else while still being productive, which is honestly the best kind of break.

If there is one book that genuinely stayed with me, it’s The Impatient. That book did not let me relax for a second. It was honestly frustrating to read at times because of how suffocating everything felt, especially with the idea of munyal being pushed so heavily onto women. The whole concept of being told to just be patient no matter what, even when that patience is clearly harming you, was so hard to sit with. What made it hit even more was how real it felt. As someone who is Indian, I couldn’t help but think about how similar expectations exist in my own culture, especially for older generations like my grandmothers. Obviously not in the exact same way, but the idea of endurance, sacrifice, and silence being expected from women is not unfamiliar at all. That made the book feel less like a distant story and more like something that reflects real patterns across different cultures.

Throughout the course, I started noticing that a lot of the books were less about big dramatic plots and more about the pressure people feel from their environments. It’s not always loud or obvious, but it’s there in the way characters make decisions, the way they limit themselves, or the way they are treated by others. In The Impatient, that pressure is very visible and direct, but in other books it shows up in quieter ways, like through relationships or internal struggles. It made me realize how much people are shaped by what surrounds them, even when they think they are making their own choices.

Something else I actually really appreciated was hearing everyone else’s perspectives. It’s kind of crazy how the same book can feel completely different depending on who is reading it. There were so many times where someone pointed out something I didn’t even notice, and it made me rethink the entire story. It really proved that reading isn’t just about what’s on the page, it’s about what you bring to it.

I’ll be honest, not every book was my favourite and some of them I definitely struggled to get through (shoutout to Combray) but even those had something to offer. And then there were books like The Impatient that genuinely stuck with me and made me think long after I finished them.

Overall, this class didn’t just make me read more, it made me more aware of what I’m reading and why it matters. I’m probably not going to keep up a book a week because that was a lot, but I do want to keep reading in a way where I actually engage with it instead of just trying to finish. If anything, this course showed me that stories can be uncomfortable, frustrating, and still incredibly important, and that’s probably what I’m going to take away from all of this.

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“Munyal”: When Patience Stops Being a Virtue and Starts Being a Sentence

Okay this book is actually insane in the quietest, most emotionally devastating way possible, and I genuinely was not prepared for how heavy it would feel. “The Impatient” follows three women whose lives are shaped by forced marriage and polygamy, and what makes it hit so hard is how normal everything feels to the people around them. From the very beginning, the word “munyal” keeps coming up, and it basically means patience, but not in a comforting way. When Ramla’s father tells them, “Munyal! That is the most valuable component of marriage and of life” (p. 3), it already feels like something is off. It’s not advice, it’s more like a rule they’re expected to follow no matter what happens to them.

What really stayed with me is how normalized the control over these women is. The instructions Ramla gets before marriage are honestly so unsettling, especially lines like “Be for him a slave and he will be your captive” (p. 4). The fact that this is said so casually, like it’s just common sense, makes it worse. No one questions it, and that silence is what makes everything feel so heavy. You can tell Ramla feels it too, especially when she describes having “a powerless, mute rage” (p. 6),  because she knows something is wrong but she has no real way out of it.

At the same time, this book felt really understandable to me in a personal way. Being Indian, I’m familiar with how common arranged marriages can be in our culture, and while my own life is very different, it still reminded me of stories I’ve heard from older generations. Like my grandmothers, for example, didn’t really have the same freedom to choose, and marriage was more about family decisions than personal feelings. Obviously it’s not exactly the same as what happens in this book, and thankfully I’m not in a situation like that, but there were moments where I could see those parallels. Especially when Ramla’s mom tells her, “Love doesn’t exist before marriage” (p. 21), it really shows how love is treated as something secondary, not the foundation. That mindset felt familiar, even if the circumstances here are way more extreme.

I also found it really powerful how the story switches between different women, because it shows that this isn’t just one person’s experience. Like with Safira, you can already see what Ramla’s future might look like, which makes everything feel even more hopeless. The repetition of “Munyal, munyal…” (p. 10) almost starts to feel suffocating by the end, like they’re being trained to endure anything.

Overall, this book felt like being quietly punched over and over again. It’s not dramatic in a loud way, but it builds this constant tension where you just feel stuck with the characters. I think what made it so powerful is that none of the women are weak, they’re just trapped in a system that’s been normalized for so long that resisting it feels almost impossible. And by the end, “patience” doesn’t feel like strength at all, it just feels like something they’ve been forced to carry.

Discussion Question: Reading this as someone who comes from a culture where arranged marriage is also common, I kept thinking about how much choice actually matters in marriage. So my question is, do the women in The Impatient ever truly have agency, or are they just learning how to survive within a system they didn’t choose?

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I Support Women’s Rights but She’s Testing Me

Okay wait let me be so real, my first reaction reading this was just like why does this already feel so intense for no reason? I went into it thinking it would be more of a nostalgic friendship story, but instead it starts with Lila disappearing and Lenù reacting in such a detached, almost irritated way that it immediately made me question everything about their relationship. It didn’t feel like a normal friendship from the start, and that feeling just kept building. When Lenù explains that Lila didn’t just want to leave but “wanted every one of her cells to disappear, nothing of her ever to be found” (p. 20), that line genuinely stuck with me because it’s such an extreme way of thinking, but it also feels completely real for her character.

What really stood out to me is how Lenù responds to that disappearance. Instead of trying to find Lila, she just starts writing everything she remembers, saying “I turned on the computer and began to write all the details of our story” (p. 23). That moment made it feel like the story isn’t just about their friendship, but about memory and control, like Lenù is trying to hold onto someone who clearly doesn’t want to be held onto. It almost feels a little obsessive, but in a way that makes sense given how intense their connection is.

Even when the story shifts to their childhood, it doesn’t get lighter the way I expected it to. Their friendship literally begins with them walking up these dark stairs toward someone they’re terrified of, “the day we decided to go up the dark stairs… to the door of Don Achille’s apartment” (p. 27). That moment really stayed with me because it shows how their relationship is built on fear and challenge rather than comfort. It’s like from the beginning, Lenù and Lila are pushing each other into situations that are uncomfortable, and that dynamic never really goes away.

Lila especially feels like the kind of person who completely pulls you in without even trying. She’s bold and unpredictable, and Lenù is clearly drawn to her but also slightly afraid of her at the same time. That dynamic felt very real to me because it’s like when you meet someone who has such a strong presence that you start shaping yourself around them without even realizing it.

Overall,  this book is way more emotionally intense than I expected, but that’s also what made it so engaging. It doesn’t try to make friendship look simple or comforting, and because of that it feels a lot more honest and hard to look away from.

Discussion Question: To what extent do you think Lenù’s identity is truly her own, and at what point does her admiration for Lila turn into something more like dependence or obsession?

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Identity Crisis, But Make It Luxury: The Business of Buying a Better Past

I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever read a book that made me feel this disoriented but also weirdly impressed at the same time. Like I started this thinking it would be a normal story and then suddenly I’m being narrated to by a gecko and no one is acting like that’s unusual. I had to just accept it and move on, which honestly sets the tone for the entire book. It constantly puts you in situations where you’re like wait what, and then five seconds later you’re like okay fine I guess this is my reality now. Even the way the narrator casually describes its life, saying “I was born in this house, and grew up here. I’ve never left,” (p.3) immediately makes you realize that this is not going to follow any normal expectations.

What actually stayed with me though wasn’t just the weirdness, it was how casually the book treats something that is actually kind of insane. Felix literally sells people new pasts, like full identities, family histories, childhoods, everything. At first it feels almost funny, like wow rich people are really out here customizing their lives like it’s a LinkedIn profile. But the more I read, the more uncomfortable it got. It made me realize how much of identity is just storytelling. If you can rewrite your past and people believe it, then what even makes something “real” anymore. When the narrator repeats “Nothing passes, nor expires, / The past is now,” (p.3-4) it doesn’t even feel dramatic, it just feels like a quiet fact, which honestly made it hit harder.

The writing itself also has this strange calmness to it, even when it’s describing things that should feel intense or disturbing. The house, the memories, even the history of Angola in the background, everything feels slightly distant but not in a bad way. It’s more like you’re watching everything through a glass window, which fits perfectly because the narrator literally spends most of its time observing. When it says, “This is a living house. A living, breathing house,” (p.9) I actually believed it. The space feels alive in a way that mirrors how the past itself is treated, like something that isn’t fixed but constantly shifting and reacting.

I also found the characters kind of funny without trying too hard. Felix especially. He’s doing something morally questionable at best, but he carries himself with this weird confidence like he’s providing a legitimate service. The way his business is described, that he “sells them a brand new past,” (p.16) is so simple but also so absurd that it almost sounds normal after a while. And somehow the book never fully condemns him or defends him, it just lets him exist, which I actually appreciated. It felt more real that way, like people are complicated and not everything needs to be clearly labeled as right or wrong.

Overall, I think what made this book stand out to me is that it doesn’t give you clear answers or a neat message. It just leaves you sitting there slightly confused but also kind of amazed at how creative it is. I didn’t always understand what was happening, but I was never bored, and honestly that says a lot.

Discussion Question: If identity can be constructed through stories and memories, like in Felix’s work, is there really a meaningful difference between a “real” past and an invented one?

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This Is the Worst Group Project I’ve Ever Seen

When I started reading Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia, I immediately felt like I had been dropped into the middle of a crime movie without any warning. There is no slow introduction, instead we are suddenly following criminals who are already deep into planning a robbery. Within the first few pages I was like okay… clearly we are not easing into this story.

The first characters we meet are known as “the twins,” which is already confusing because they are not actually twins at all. The narrator explains that “They are called the twins because they’re inseparable. But they aren’t brothers, nor do they even look like one another.” Honestly this detail immediately hooked me because it shows how weird and unconventional the characters in this world are. Their identities are not really about facts but about reputation and the roles they play in the group.

One thing that stood out to me while reading was how seriously these criminals treat the robbery. It is not chaotic at all in the planning stage. In fact, they treat it almost like a military operation. They carefully study the timing of the money transfer and the layout of the square. At one point the narrator explains that the money transfer only takes “seven minutes from when the money appeared in the doorway of the Bank to getting it loaded on to the station wagon.” Seven minutes!! Reading that made me stressed on their behalf because that is such a tiny window of time. One wrong move and the whole thing could completely fall apart.

Another thing I found really entertaining was how strange some of the characters are. Malito, who is basically the mastermind of the operation, is described as extremely intelligent but also kind of unhinged. For example, he constantly cleans his hands with alcohol because he believes that “every germ gets transmitted through the hands.” This is such a random but oddly funny detail. Imagine being in the middle of planning a huge robbery and the guy in charge is obsessively disinfecting his hands like he is in a hospital.

What I also noticed is that even though the gang thinks they have everything perfectly planned, the story already feels unstable. Witnesses later contradict each other, people are nervous, and everyone seems slightly paranoid. Even during the planning stage there is this sense that things could spiral out of control at any moment. Overall, Money to Burn feels chaotic in a way that actually makes the story more interesting. Even though the characters try to act like they have everything under control, it is pretty clear that the situation is way messier than they think. Watching everything slowly unravel is what makes the book so tense and honestly kind of addictive to read.

Discussion Question: Did the ending surprise you, or did you expect things to turn out that way?

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How One Random Coat Turned a Dinner Party into a Conspiracy

Reading “The Trenchcoat” honestly felt like sitting through one of those long adult dinner parties where everyone is drinking wine and talking about politics while you slowly lose track of what the conversation is even about. For most of the story, the characters are just sitting around talking, gossiping, and making slightly awkward jokes. At first I kept waiting for something dramatic to happen, but the story mostly stays in this slow, tense dinner conversation.

The weird thing is that everyone is technically having a good time, but it doesn’t actually feel fun. The narrator even describes the atmosphere with “laughter, jokes, signs of the times,” (196) but also calls the whole thing an “festive force of nature” (196) That description made me laugh because it perfectly captures the vibe of the story. Everyone is laughing, but the laughter feels forced. It’s like people are pretending everything is normal when clearly nobody feels relaxed.

The funniest and strangest part of the story is the whole raincoat situation. There’s this random coat hanging in the hallway and suddenly everyone is acting like it’s the biggest mystery of the century. One character asks, “Which trenchcoat?” (233) and someone immediately replies, “What? What which? The raincoat.. i’m telling you that one” (233). At that point I had to pause because I was thinking: are we seriously about to have a full investigation about a coat? But the more the characters talk about it, the more paranoid the conversation becomes. People start acting suspicious of each other, like the coat might belong to someone dangerous or connected to the government. It’s funny at first, but it also shows how tense their world is. When nobody trusts anyone, even a random coat becomes suspicious.

Another thing that stood out to me while reading was how boring life seems for the characters. Most of their time is spent sitting around talking, gossiping, and making comments about other people. Nothing dramatic is really happening, which actually makes the story feel slow on purpose. Usually when we read stories connected to politics or war, everything is intense or full of action, but here the characters mostly just hang out, complain, and talk about each other. Somehow the most exciting thing that happens is everyone trying to figure out who the trenchcoat in the hallway belongs to.

The dialogue is also chaotic. Characters interrupt each other and sometimes repeat themselves. There were moments where I had to reread parts because I lost track of who was talking. But in a weird way that makes the scene feel realistic, like an actual messy conversation instead of a perfectly organized one.

By the end of the story, the trenchcoat feels less like an object and more like a symbol of paranoia. When people live in a system where everyone might be watching everyone else, even something as normal as a coat hanging in a hallway can cause a whole room of adults to panic. Overall, the story is slow, a little confusing at times, and honestly kind of funny in a dark way. It shows how people can turn something small into a huge mystery when they are already suspicious of everything around them.

Also, after reading this story, if I ever walk into someone’s house and everyone starts arguing about a random coat in the hallway, I’m immediately leaving.

Discussion Question: If you walked into that dinner party and saw everyone arguing about a random trenchcoat, what would you assume was going on?

 

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This Book Told Me to Pee Before Reading It

There are books that tell a story, and then there are books that look you in the eye, point at you, and say: you. Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is the second kind. From literally the first sentence, you’re being instructed: “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel… Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought.” And I’m sorry, but who starts a novel by telling me to adjust my lighting and make sure I’ve peed before reading? The audacity. The intimacy. The chaos.

Calvino basically traps you inside the act of reading. You’re not just observing a story — you are the reader inside the story. And that “I” floating around? That could be you, the narrator, the author, or some poor man stuck in a foggy railway station questioning his life choices. Probably all of the above. At one point the narrator casually says, “I am the man who comes and goes between the bar and the telephone booth. Or, rather: that man is called ‘I’ and you know nothing else about him.” WHICH IS WILD. Imagine being reduced to a pronoun. Identity? Gone. Just vibes and existential train smoke.

The opening scene in the station feels cinematic and oddly suffocating. “The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter…” It’s atmospheric, sure, but also deliberately vague. You don’t know where you are. You don’t even know when you are. And that’s the point. Calvino keeps dissolving certainty. The more you try to grab onto the plot, the more it slips away like steam.

What I loved most is how the book makes you hyper-aware of your own expectations. There’s this moment where the narrator reflects that “in reading… you must remain both oblivious and highly alert.” That line honestly summarizes the whole experience. You have to surrender to confusion while also paying attention to every detail. It’s like intellectual multitasking.

But beneath all the cleverness and postmodern tricks, there’s something very human happening. The “I” at the station feels trapped in time, wanting to undo mistakes, to return to a “zero moment.” That feeling? Relatable. We’ve all wanted to rewind a conversation, erase a decision, re-pack the metaphorical suitcase. The fragmented narrative mirrors that anxiety — life isn’t linear, so why should novels be?

Reading this book felt like being gently roasted by literature itself. Calvino knows you buy books faster than you read them. He knows you expect something and pretend you don’t. And he calls you out for it — politely, but still. It’s playful, philosophical, and slightly unhinged in the best way.

Honestly? It’s not just a novel. It’s a mirror. And it’s staring directly back at you.

Discussion Question:
Why do you think Calvino chooses to address the reader directly as “you”? Does it make you feel more connected to the story, or does it make the reading experience feel strange and unsettling?

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Love, But With Terms and Conditions

I genuinely thought The Time of the Doves was going to be a soft, romantic, Barcelona-in-the-sun type of novel. Instead, I got a man who renames a woman within five minutes of meeting her.

Natalia goes to a festival. She’s tired. Her waistband is digging into her stomach. She’s thinking about literally anything except destiny. Then Quimet appears, asks her to dance, and by the end of the night he’s calling her Colometa. She corrects him, her name is Natalia, and he insists she can have “only one name: Colometa.”

And somehow… she doesn’t run.

That moment is so small, but it’s so loud. Because renaming someone is not cute. It’s ownership disguised as affection. And what makes it brilliant is that Rodoreda doesn’t dramatize it. No music swells. No narrator screams “RED FLAG.” It just happens.

That’s the pattern of the whole novel.

Quimet isn’t written like an obvious monster. He’s talkative, dramatic, obsessed with furniture, deeply committed to arguing about salt at dinner. At one point he turns seasoning into a philosophical crisis about the devil. It would be funny if it wasn’t so revealing. Everything becomes his stage.

Meanwhile, Natalia’s inner world is chaotic but quiet. She says, “We lived without words in my house,” and that line explains so much. She isn’t equipped for confrontation. She feels things deeply, but she processes them inwardly. Even her anxiety shows up physically — the waistband “pinching, pinching” while she dances. Her body is stressed before she consciously is.

What really got me is how gradual the transformation is. There isn’t one dramatic moment where Natalia disappears. It’s smaller than that. He tells her she has to like what he likes. She asks, gently, “What if I just can’t bring myself to like something?” He answers, “You’ve got to like it.” Conversation over. That’s it. And somehow that tiny exchange says more than a full screaming match would.

And then Rodoreda throws in absurd details- middle-aged men celebrating an appendix surgery crash the wedding dance. People obsess over wallpaper. Arguments about apartments feel like life-or-death. The tone swings between comedy and suffocation so smoothly you almost don’t notice the suffocation creeping in.

That’s what makes this novel so unsettling: it shows how identity can be reshaped politely.

No dramatic collapse. No cinematic betrayal. Just slow adjustments. A nickname repeated enough times becomes real. A compromise repeated enough times becomes personality.

By the time Natalia is fully Colometa, it doesn’t feel like something that happened to her.

It feels like something that happened quietly around her.

And that’s worse.

Discussion Question: Do you see Natalia’s transformation as something imposed on her, or something she slowly participates in without realizing it?

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When Rocks Have Beef and Bells Are Emotionally Unstable: Surviving Deep Rivers

Some books gently invite you into their world. Deep Rivers absolutely does not. It grabs you by the shoulders, points at a wall, and says: “This stone is alive. Deal with it.” And honestly? I kind of loved that.

José María Arguedas’s Deep Rivers is a novel where nothing stays quiet. Rivers bleed, stones move, bells mourn, and the landscape refuses to be neutral. From Ernesto’s first encounter with the Inca wall in Cuzco, it’s clear this isn’t a story where nature sits politely in the background. The stones don’t just exist, they act. Ernesto describes the wall as if it were alive, its surface “as undulating and unpredictable as a river,” and even gives it a name that sounds both violent and sacred: “puk’tik yawar rumi”—boiling bloody stone. Casual!

What makes this so compelling is that Ernesto isn’t being dramatic for no reason. In Deep Rivers, the world actually responds to human history. Pain doesn’t disappear it settles into the land. Rivers are called “yawar mayu” (bloody rivers), not metaphorically, but because they carry the memory of violence and suffering. Arguedas doesn’t explain this away, he lets it sit there, heavy and uncomfortable.

And then there’s the Maria Angola bell. If bells are usually supposed to be comforting, this one absolutely is not. Its sound doesn’t soothe, it overwhelms. When it rings, Ernesto feels like the entire city vibrates with grief. The bell seems to mourn everyone at once: the oppressed, the forgotten, the humiliated. It’s impossible not to connect that sound to the figure of the pongo, whose existence is defined by fear and silence. Ernesto notices that the pongo looks like someone who has “no father nor mother, only his shadow.” That line hurts precisely because Arguedas doesn’t dramatize it he just lets it land.

Ernesto himself is caught between worlds: Indigenous and colonial, spiritual and institutional, childlike wonder and painful awareness. He feels everything too deeply, which makes the novel feel less like a coming-of-age story and more like a slow emotional initiation. He’s learning that beauty and suffering aren’t opposites here they coexist.

What I found most fascinating about Deep Rivers is that it doesn’t try to resolve these tensions. There’s no neat conclusion, no comforting takeaway. Instead, the novel leaves you with the sense that history is alive, watching, and unfinished. Like the stones of Cuzco, it stays with you-quietly, insistently-long after you’ve turned the last page.

Discussion Question: Do you think Deep Rivers suggests that memory and trauma are carried more by people or by places?

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This House Has Mold, Memories, and Malice

Reading Nada felt less like reading a novel and more like being dropped into someone else’s extremely tense family group chat, except it’s set in postwar Barcelona and everyone is emotionally unwell in a deeply artistic way. What got me wasn’t the plot (which I’ll spare you), but the feeling of the book: that constant sense that the walls are closing in, that the air is stale, and that Andrea is just trying to exist without being spiritually jump-scared every five minutes.

Andrea’s voice is what really carries the novel for me. She’s observant, sensitive, and quietly funny in a way that feels unintentional, like when you laugh just to cope. One line that stuck with me describes the apartment as feeling like “a conspiracy of the entire universe to frustrate Andrea and keep her, and almost everyone around her, from being happy.” That line honestly felt personal. Laforet captures something so specific about being young and hopeful in a place that is aggressively committed to crushing both those things.

What I loved most is how Nada refuses to give us a clean moral framework. No one is fully good, no one is fully evil, and everyone is shaped by scarcity, of food, of love, of freedom. The adults cling to control because it’s the only power they have left, while Andrea quietly absorbs everything, trying not to disappear. At one point, she admits that “what is unspoken is more important than what is said,” and that pretty much sums up the whole novel. The silence, the pauses, the things characters don’t say end up screaming the loudest.

Also, can we talk about how the apartment itself feels like a haunted character? Between the darkness, the clutter, and the constant tension, it’s giving emotional horror movie. Not ghosts, just unresolved trauma and too many opinions. Honestly, if bad vibes were a location, this house would be on Google Maps.

But despite all of this, or maybe because of it, Nada doesn’t feel hopeless. Andrea’s survival isn’t loud or dramatic. It’s subtle. She endures. She observes. She doesn’t let the chaos fully rewrite who she is. That quiet resistance felt more powerful to me than any big, triumphant ending ever could.

Discussion question: Do you think Andrea’s refusal to fully engage with the dysfunction around her is a form of strength, or is it a kind of emotional withdrawal?

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