Monthly Archives: March 2024

death, putting the ‘fun’ back into funeral

Posted on by under Saramago

If you’ve read some of my blogs before you may remember me as the girl who was scared while reading the shrouded woman because of her constant worry of death…yup you could imagine my joy reading this book, I’m joking, I actually really enjoyed this book, even with the constant talk about death (maybe I’ve accepted fate??? Who knows), Before I get into my opinion on this book I wanted to relate it to another book that I’ve read called “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E Schwab, It’s a pretty popular book so some of you may have read it, but it’s special to me because it was the first book I read, during the blazing Vancouver summer of 2021, that got me hooked into reading, One of the first books in a long time that I had truly enjoyed, It’s a Fantasy Fiction/ Historical Fiction and I felt it was similar to “Death with Interruptions” by José Saramago, it speaks a lot about memory and a similar “what would happen if…” story that makes you reflect on how things are, maybe not super similar but I got the same vibe, Now as I said before I really enjoyed this novel, “what would happen if everyone in one area just stopped dying one day?” is essentially the simple summary, out of all the novels we’ve read so far this one raised the most questions for me, One of my first thoughts about this was what would happen to the crimes that are punishable by death? Would people commit these crimes with knowing they cant be punished by death? Or would they even be able to commit the crime as most crimes that are punishable by death are murders? There are so many things brough up in this book that I didn’t even think about, like how immortality would effect politics, jobs like funeral workers, healthcare workers (which in honesty it sounded like their situation of the hospitals getting filled up is similar to our own situations today, at least headed in that direction), how it effects religion, and even the suffering of those about to face death described, I also think the choice to turn death into a female personification was an interesting choice, to anthropomorphize death and give her feelings of remorse for the decision to make everyone immortal, I feel the lesson from this book is to not get in the way of death and it’s plans, anyways I really did enjoy this book and am excited to discuss it further,
It also seems I forgot how to use a period, oops, how very Saramago of me.

My question to you is how would you spend you pre-death week?

maybe money should be fireproof…?

Posted on by under Piglia

Money to Burn by Ricardo Piglia has been my favourite book we have read in this class. To be honest I wasn’t expecting to like an Argentina-based gang robbery as much as I did but for whatever reason I found this book a much easier read than any others. Most of the time I can read books quick when I enjoy them and I find myself reading for a long time w
A part of it I didn’t enjoy however were the random unhinged lines. They were random in terms of context, the only thing about them that was out of place was the graphicness of them. The very first line I noted that caught me off guard was on page 9 which says “He forced him to his knees, plunged his face in the mud, and it’s said he pulled down his trousers and raped him while the cop struggled to try to free himself with his head under water.” I would argue, however, that maybe these early-on lines were put in to reflect the intensity of these characters, what they’ve seen and what they’ve done. It prepares us for scenes we get further into the novel like when we find out about the back story of Dorda or the Kid. I found their stories really crazy, like Dorda and the voices he hears in his head and the Kid and his story about r*ping girls, which was really messed up. I also found the two’s (Dorda and the Kid) relationship very interesting, I almost felt bad for them, how they cared for eachother (seceret lovers?). I especially felt bad when the Kid died in the final scene, the standoff with the police,”dead at his (Dordas) feet, the only man who had ever loved him, and who’d treated him as a person, better than a brother, that Kid Brignone had treated him like a woman” (188-189pg), But just when I want to feel bad for the characters they say something that reminds me that they are infact (pretty messed up) crminals. Also the amount of character at first, and honestly sometimes as they were randomly brought up, confused me at times. I found myself having to go back and try and remember who is who. Even when people died (like twisty ((?)) spoiler) I found myself saying “oh no!…wait who was that again?”
This to me felt like a gang version (and a much more brutal version) of Oceans 11. This happens to be one of my favourite movies (I’d recommend to anyone who enjoys the quick-paced heist genre), I like seeing the thought process when people who really want things that are below the law and how they think, it’s a different kind of smarts.

My question is what was your final opinion on the characters? Did you still feel some sympathy or was not a fan of the criminal minded robbers?

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, a (y/n) story

Posted on by under Calvino

I remember when I was looking through books to read I saw the blurb about If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino and I thought it sounded very unique. I don’t think “unique” begins to describe what this book is! It really pushes you, the readers (me!), expectations, I never knew quite what I was going to read next…it was fun! I have a very very short attention span, however this felt like a series of short stories with narrations in between, I found it was able to keep my attention a bit better than some longer stories. I related to the reader opposite us the reader (me the reader? … you can imagine how confusing this gets) near the end of the story, “Don’t be amazed ifyou see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful for me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end” (254). He then goes in to saying that although he only reads a few pages, it holds “whole universes”. It’s jarring as a university student and a reader to read this constant use of “you” and second person perspective as it’s something I feel like we get harped on not to use is scholarly essays. I do however feel that its uniqueness also played a part in some confusion that was present in the story. I am almost positive I missed multiple things due to the constant perspective changes, sometimes when saying “I” it seemed the author was referring to himself but sometimes I couldn’t tell if the “I” was referring to me, the reader, from my POV.
In the lecture the question of how we read the book was asked. What form did this novel take as we consumed it? I just chose to read it as a free PDF version, as I’ve figured out that when I buy books for courses I never touch them again (no offence!). This changes the experience for me with this story as the author constantly refers to the book as an item. “you have turned toward a stack of If on a winter’s night a traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier” (pg.6), I’m sure this quote would’ve been a little more jarring to me, the reader, if I ad actually experienced going to the bookstore to buy this book. I think this question applies to the book as the author constantly makes assumptions about the reader, like assuming the reader is reading a physical book.

My question is were any of the assumptions the author made about you correct? How did that make you feel if he made an assumption that was right? uneasy? If it was wrong did you feel like it took you out of the story?

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