When tasked to reflect on this course by writing this final blog, my first thought was to do a ranking of all books I read, but then I thought, no, Sofia, you can’t just regurgitate what you’ve been writing all term, but you know what? Jon said he doesn’t care if our blogs are “hot garbage” so I’m doing it anyway.
Starting off strong with Proust. And when I say “starting off strong” I mean like a loud alarm clock rudely awakening you at 7am and then you just go back to sleep.
Nadja. Pass.
The Shrouded Women. Made me cry beautiful tears of I don’t know what.
Nada. This genuinely might’ve been my favourite and I recall only like 15 people came to the lecture that day. Everyone chose to get traumatized by Agostino instead of reading this masterpiece.
Black Shack. This was solid. Enlightening.
The Time of the Doves. This one really solidified my stance as a man-hater in these blogs, and I’m not mad about it.
The Hour of the Star. God, I love this book.
The Lover. I was initially not the biggest fan and still am not. The in-class debate did actually have me switching sides but still, pass.
Money to Burn. Stole some money, burned it, blah blah blah. I did get 10 USD for answering a question in class, that was pretty fire (pun always intended no matter how poor).
The Book of Chameleons. I felt so cool reading this. Cool as a cucumber. But also, I felt like I was reading it on a hot day. I feel like the characters are hot. They read and lie and take pictures of clouds. That’s a hot people book. Smash.
My Brilliant Friend. Brilliant right to the end. This provided a short respite from my scrolling addiction. Might even read the next one, who knows?
The Impatient. See Time of Doves.
Okay. So we ended playing smash or pass on books I read for a university Romance Studies course. I mean, there are worse things.
In all seriousness though, I loved this course. Maybe Romance Studies is for me. Maybe this whole world of translated, transported, multicultural, beautiful, re-read worthy literature could be my world too. I’m still curious about all the other books I didn’t read. How I craved Calvino, but ultimately my patriotic side won, and Lispector it was. What did I miss by not choosing the others? What have I been missing all my life? What worlds remain unseen by not gorging in translated fiction, by not serially blogging?
I feel like I could become a professional blogger now. Is that a thing? Do people get paid to write blogs? Maybe I should look into that.
Sofia