blog#12 – concluding thoughts — Man. I read a lot of books this year, and it’s only april. I’m not sure if I’ll ever take a course like this again. Not because I didn’t like it but because I’m not sure what to call this kind of class, or where to find it. (Other than […]
blog#11 – Time and the way She swims through Dreams — As soon as I finished the book, I fell asleep. I read The Society of Reluctant Dreamers in a period where I was (and am) sleeping a lot. I clocked in about 14 or 15 hours straight the other night. I’m not quite sure why […]
blog#10 – the traits of Womanhood — The first thing that really took my attention while reading Roberto Bolaño’s book Amulet, was the fact that Bolaño himself was writing from a female character’s perspective. I know its quite normal for a male author to write in female voice, but for some reason this is what stuck […]
blog#9 – the Object of Anxiety — I’ll admit that I am not very good at remembering character’s names when reading, especially during the part I have to read in dialogue. But in this book, many characters have a kind of tic or catchphrase that they say which I thought was really interesting. Whatever their […]
blog#8 – the burden of Names — Georges Perec’s book ‘W, or The Memory of Childhood’ was by far the book with the most interesting formatting. (Out of the books that I’ve read for this class anyway). The two parallel stories and the switching back-and-forth took a lot of getting used to, and admittedly, I […]
blog#7 – a woman and her Cockroach — Reading The Passion According to G.H. was one of the closest moments that I felt like I was reading a well-composed transcript of my own thoughts. The way the Clarice Lispector seamlessly yet abruptly changes from concept to concept is mind-bogglingly impressive – all the while articulating […]
blog#6 – taming Chaos — The Duality of Cécile was by far the most captivating aspect of Bonjour Tristesse. Françoise Sagan’s ability to portray both a wild, cunning jealousy and guilt-ridden empathy and sorrow is what makes the book such an interesting read. The raw honesty and (at times, hesitant yet inevitable) introspection of Cécile’s own […]
blog#5 – teenage Hubris — Laforet’s writing and Andrea’s inner monologue felt like a moment taken from my own thoughts. Her thought processes were so oddly intricate yet seemed vague, as if she only had a few seconds to take in her environment and the people around her. Andrea’s shy, reserved, yet stubborn and quietly […]
blog#4 – a Dead Woman existing in the 4D Life is a crueler fate than Death. That’s the thought that rattled in my head for the entire reading of Bombal’s ‘The Shrouded Woman’. Though many other attributes of the story become abundantly clear, the atmosphere of Death and Envy was subtle, yet, overwhelming. The addition […]
I loved reading Paris Peasant. It was everything it was described as: “a-novel-that-was-not-a-novel”, a character study, a portrait, part-fiction, part-treatise, part-memoir. I did wonder beforehand how a novel could encompass all of these things and still be balanced and enjoyable, yet it did all these things and more. For a few moments during my reading, […]