Author Archives: annabelle

My final post on Les Misérables! Last week, I got to see Les Misérables at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre! Both Jon and one of my friends had told me that it was hard to follow, so as the curtains fell, I locked in. Happily, I found that the first three quarters were almost exactly like […] Continue reading →

Ahhh. This was the easiest that picking up Bolaño has been all semester. I’ll admit I’ve done most of my reading early Wednesday morning and late Wednesday night this semester (so that I can write my blog before midnight and work on things for my two other Thursday classes that are due in the morning […] Continue reading →

Back to Les Misérables for this week! Here’s a quick summary of the book so far: Jean Valjean was convicted for a crime in his youth. He repented and became a beloved mayor, but then tenacious police officer Inspector Javert found out about his criminal past and started hunting him down. Along the way Jean […] Continue reading →

I’ve sort of avoided saying this in my blogs because I feel bad, but I can’t hold it in any longer: if The Savage Detectives were not for class, I would have stopped reading around page 200. Which I do not usually do – my mom calls it “book martyring” where we both have to […] Continue reading →

Whew! Even though it is my first time reading both books, after the polyphony of The Savage Detectives, returning to Les Misérables felt like sliding back into a favourite armchair after a long day. Here, there is one narrator, one clear protagonist, and one clear antagonist. What a comfy seat. I started a section, called […] Continue reading →

Getting back into The Savage Detectives after about three weeks off was not as difficult as I had feared – I recognized the first voice, Amadeo Salvatierra, from his references to the Suicida Mezcal, and the rest of the pieces linked together from there. It helped that some of the chapters began to grow into […] Continue reading →

The first two lines of Amulet that I read were the first, as I opened the book, and the last, as I flipped to see how many pages I should pace myself for each day this week: “This is going to be a horror story” (p. 1) and “And that song is our amulet” (p. […] Continue reading →

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo, page 74-120 At the end of the last section, we were introduced to Fantine, a young mother who has to leave her daughter, Cosette, with a cruel family; Monsieur Madeleine, the beloved new mayor of Fantine’s hometown who promises to get Cosette back; and Inspector Javert, who assures M. Madeleine that […] Continue reading →

As I cozied up to start the next section of The Savage Detectives, I was very curious to see where the story would take me. I want to know what happens to Lupe, and I wonder how Garcia Madero will continue to mature. At first, I felt a bit lost in this new narrators and […] Continue reading →