I must say it felt like yesterday when I first looked at my Semester 2 timetable and wondered why romance studies takes place in the math building (as well as trying to find it, confusing the mathematics annex for the math building, and nearly being late for the first class because I’m bad with directions).
I still am, to this day. But enough about that.
I also remember being confused with the concept of “contract grading” since I was expecting RMST 202 to follow a similar structure to RMST 201. It was certainly unique compared to the other classes I had, especially since we get to pick out the books we want to read as well as the grade we want for our report card.
Naturally, that would mean a lot of us would gun for As and A+s, right?
Regardless, I still heavily enjoyed the course and the wide selection of texts that was available.
If I have to pick out a favorite book, I suppose it would have to come down to two choices: “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” and “My Brilliant Friend.” The first one because I’ve found the different types of reading styles to be interesting to note (also because I personally interpret the author as trying to start on many creative writing projects but unable to finish any of them so he decided to combine them all into one book). And the second one partially because I’ve already read it before, and it is one of my favorite series to read because of how nuanced everything is – not to mention the complex friendship that Elena and Lila share with each other.
And I wasn’t too fond of books that heavily focused on romance (to state some examples: the second half of “Death with Interruptions” and “The Lover”). But I can mostly attribute that to not being interested in romantic relationship-centered plots in general since the genre never quite appealed to me.
Thank you so much Professor for creating various forms of lecture videos so we could follow along (I really enjoyed reading the transcripts and drink pairings as well as your reasonings for why the drink and the book should go together). And thanks TAs Daniel and Tesi for reading our blog posts! Also, thank to everyone who’s commented on my blog posts – your follow-up thoughts had certainly given me a lot of food for thought post-reading!
Throughout the semester, what was your favorite book you read and why?