Author Archives: parden

Now that the sun is shining, I’m finally in the mood for reading a long book recreationally (in the sun, at the beach, with an iced matcha). I just started reading a hardcover version of The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai which, while not written in a romance language, is certainly a long […] Continue reading →

(Note: I don’t have page numbers this week because I am using the Apple Books ebook version which changes its page numbers  based on the size of the app window) I cheated a little bit and finished The Shadow of the Wind just before I finished The Savage Detectives, so I think the distance between […] Continue reading →

I think I’ve been trying to sit with the why of it all. Why is this the ending Bolaño chose? What does ending on a short flashback section achieve for the story? Is it to sandwich the book between two Garcia Madero sections for symmetry? Did he want a chance to play around with the […] Continue reading →

I only read five chapters of The Shadow of the Wind this week (maybeeee 65 pages), which means I have about 190 pages to read next time to finish off the book (hoping for some nice weather so I can read outside). I did read some spoilers on another blog post, which was my own […] Continue reading →

I’m running out of things to write about. This is our fifth blog post on Bolaño, which will make about 2000 words by the end of this, and I’m struggling to come up with likes or dislikes that I haven’t already harped on about. I’m liking the book well enough by now, which is more to […] Continue reading →

I am ready to be finished this book. I know at the beginning of the semester, I commented on the fact that The Shadow of the Wind is the first book in the series and that I was optimistic about being able to continue with the following books. Maybe one day I’ll love picking them […] Continue reading →

I took a break from reading during reading break, for better or worse, which has made for an interesting re-entry into the world of our novel. I caught up on reality tv and scrolled through way more Instagram reels than I should have, consuming all sorts of media that was not written by our beloved […] Continue reading →

I find myself struggling to know what to write about this week’s reading. This was one of those books that I’ll finish and probably not really think about again (besides our incoming class discussion). I neither loved nor hated it. I don’t really feel any particular way about Amulet, I just read it and now […] Continue reading →

I have now reached the twenty-first chapter in The Shadow of the Wind, where Daniel (main character) has just left his meeting with Nuria (who knew Julián Carax personally) after discussing Julián and his books. I had hoped to finish chapter 24 in this section, but I’ll just have to pick up some slack with […] Continue reading →

I kind of feel like I cheated a little this week, when I downloaded an .epub copy of The Savage Detectives onto my laptop to read virtually while I was out and about. The whole reading-a-big-book vibe was ruined because I had no real way of conceptualizing how much of the book I had read or […] Continue reading →