Month: January 2026

Honestly this book wasn’t what I expected, reading with the soft tone and perspective of a woman really made me question how every single one of our decisions lead us to different paths and possibilities. For me regret has to be one of the worst possible feelings.

Think about the last time you lay awake at night going over something you or didn’t said three years ago. Now, imagine that feeling, but it’s your final night on earth and you’re literally unable to roll over or check your phone to distract yourself. That’s her. She’s the ultimate overthinker, stuck in a physical “do not disturb” mode while her brain runs a marathon through her past.

She’s lying there dissecting her old heartbreaks and family drama with the kind of brutal honesty we only get when we’re overthinking at 3:00 AM. It’s like she’s trying to edit the script of her life after the play has already ended. She spends the whole book caught in that mental loop of “did they ever really love me?” and “was I actually the villain in their story?”.

It’s honestly such a call-out for anyone who lives in their own head (like me). Bombal perfectly captures that claustrophobia of being trapped with your own thoughts, proving that the loudest place in the world isn’t a crowded room, it’s your own mind when you’re trying to find closure.

I think so far it has been my favourite read, not only are we finally getting a perspective from a woman but it’s truly captivating (not in a weird way) the concept of death, and how thoughts, regrets, and memories hold so much weight on each of us, or at least that’s what I think.

For everyone else reading this: If you were in Ana María’s position, which one memory or “what if” do you think your brain would get stuck on for the entire night?

See yaa next week.

xoxo

I’ll start with saying that reading this was way better than the last book which genuinely made me question if I was dumb. André starts the book by asking, “who am I?” Honestly, mood. But instead of taking a nap or getting a hobby, he decides that the only way to find himself is to walk around Paris until something “weird” happens. He calls this objective chance.

In 2026, we call this doom scrolling in real life. He literally just wandered around waiting for the universe to send him a notification.

Then he met Nadja. She is the blueprint.

• She doesn’t have a job.

• She draws cryptic symbols on napkins.

• She says things like, “I am wandering soul”

André is immediately obsessed. He thinks she’s a magical creature sent to save him from a boring life. But the second she starts having actual, real-life mental health struggles. André is suddenly like, “wait this isn’t fun and aesthetic anymore”

The book ends with one of the most famous lines in history: “Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.” Translation? If your life isn’t a chaotic, shaking, supernatural mess, you’re doing it wrong. It’s the 1920s version of “If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best,” except the person saying it is a French man with a very expensive coat.

Honestly it would be a pretty good movie that i would watch when I’m not sure what to watch, overall 7/10 because men continue to disappoint me, but she was actually kinda cool in a weird way.

We’ve all been there: staring at a sentence so long it feels like a marathon, wondering if we’ve forgotten how to read. That was my perspective when reading “Combray”.

I’ll be honest, I spent a significant amount of time rereading paragraphs, looking it up on google, and questioning if I was “doing it wrong.” But as survived reading every single one of 100 word sentences, I realized something maybe feeling lost isn’t a failure of reading; it’s the point of the experience. Because there is no way in hell I could actually understand every part of this book.

Reading Proust doesn’t feel like reading a memoir; it feels like being pulled into the actual machinery of a human brain. Most books tell you what happened. Proust shows you how it felt to remember it.

The famous madeleine scene is the perfect example. The narrator dips a little cake into his tea, and suddenly, the entire village of Combray rises out of his cup. It’s an interesting contrast to my own life as I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday. But Proust captures that “lightning bolt” moment where a taste unlocks a door in your mind you didn’t even know was there.

One of the most relatable parts of the book is how Proust describes the two walking paths: The Swann Way and The Guermantes Way. As a child, the narrator treats them like two completely separate worlds, each filled with mystery. Looking back as an adult, he realizes they weren’t as different as he thought. It’s a beautiful metaphor for how we view the world when we’re young, everything is heightened, symbolic and more colorful.

I was quite surprised by how Proust handles the “Goodnight Kiss.” The narrator’s desperate anxiety over whether his mother will come to his room feels life-or-death. Proust doesn’t laugh this off as “childish drama.” Instead, he shows how those early signs of anxiety eventually become the waves that shape our adult relationships.

If you’re thinking about tackling this classic, my advice is to surrender and accept defeat. Don’t fight the long sentences or the constant long words. This book isn’t about fully understanding every word on the first try; it’s about letting yourself sit with the confusion and the emotions. You might have to reread a paragraph three times and accept that Proust is smarter than all of us, but the view from the “Swann Way” is well worth the effort.

Have you ever had a “madeleine moment” where a smell or taste brought back a flood of memories?

My name is Marianah, but when it comes to last names, I never really know what to say. I come from a deeply multicultural family: a German grandfather, an Italian grandmother, a Colombian mother, and a Canadian father, so you can imagine how peculiar my family reunions are. This mix of cultures and histories that fell in love and created a family has left me with four last names: Soler Navarro Recalde Bratch. However, according to the Canadian government, I can only have two, so for the sake of this class, my name is Marianah Soler Navarro.

I was born in Colombia but have traveled back and forth between Canada and Colombia every year since I was a baby, never fully considering either place my home. That changed when it came time to graduate high school. My entire family waited for my decision: university in Colombia or in Canada. For me, it was never really a question. Ever since I was a little girl riding my bike around UBC, I knew I wanted to be here. I learned how

I chose this class because my heritage has made me deeply value language and history. Growing up, I often felt caught in between being too Latina to be white, and too white to be Latina. Through language, books, and history, I have found a sense of individuality and a deep appreciation for the beauty of different cultures and their scripts. I’m excited for this class because it will further provide me with the tools and critical skills to better understand identity, culture, and the ways stories (both personal and historical)have a way of shaping who we are.

Ultimately, I hope this course will help me articulate experiences that have often felt hard to name. By engaging with different texts, histories, and perspectives, I want to better understand not only where I come from, but how identity can exist in movement rather than in fixed categories. I see this class as an opportunity to connect my personal story with broader cultural narratives, and to continue learning how language can be a space of belonging rather than limitation.