Author Archives: aburke09

I have to admit that I had no idea what to expect going into this class. I had spoken to Jon beforehand because I had to choose between this class or SPAN 495 (my course load wouldn’t allow me to do both this term) and when he told me there would be no final exams, […] Continue reading →

I am happy to say that the book made a quick turnaround. I expressed my disappointment in my last post because the story of why some people wanted Carax dead just seemed too dramatic and unrealistic. One thing I had been confused about (and expressed in my previous blogs) finally made sense: I had been […] Continue reading →

I have to say that this is probably the strangest book I have ever read. Bolaño’s style of writing in general (based on the other short stories we read of his) is definitely unique. I can’t say I have ever read anything quite like it, and especially not in a long book. I have to […] Continue reading →

While I still have about 90 pages left to read, I can tell that the book is starting to wrap up. I had a feeling that the famous author Julián Carax was not dead, and while this hasn’t actually been confirmed yet, we did find out that on the night that everyone thought Carax died, […] Continue reading →

I have to start by expressing my excitement that there was finally a mention of Juan García Madero, in the last chapter of Section 2. This “expert” of Visceral Realism, Ernesto García Grajales, believes that García Madero was never a true visceral realist, which makes the most sense since he is never mentioned by anyone […] Continue reading →

I have been reading about 90 pages in this book every other week and so since we haven’t made a post on our Selected Reading in a while, this post will be on the last 180 pages that I’ve read. Oddly enough, every time I stop before writing in this blog, Daniel is about to […] Continue reading →

I really enjoyed reading this section of Savage Detectives. It was maybe the first time I felt like I didn’t want to put the book down and also wanted to keep reading into the next section.  While there are still new characters being introduced and I’m still wondering why some of them have a central […] Continue reading →

While I enjoyed the beginning and the end of Amuleto, I did not enjoy the book overall.  Most of the time I was annoyed or bored. I just wanted the book to end but the process got dragged out even longer for me because my mind kept wandering and so I’d have to go back and […] Continue reading →

I stopped reading at the end of chapter 19 of The Shadow of the Wind and oddly enough, it feels like I finished in the same place I finished last time.  As I mentioned in my previous blog, I stopped right as Daniel had received information about Isaac’s daughter, Nuria. Isaac told him that Nuria and […] Continue reading →

Just as I said that I liked the journal-style writing in the first part of the book, I also really like the writing style of the second part. I am assuming that all the different voices talking are to represent these people being interviewed. In the first paragraph of section two we see: “Amadeo Salvatierra, […] Continue reading →