It feels so weird to be done. This class helped me push up my yearly reading goal on Goodreads and now, I won’t have a constant recommendation on what to read anymore. No joke, this class made me think of joining a book club because reading the novels and discussing them in class was my […]
In The Impatient by Djaïli Amadou Amal, one of the main ideas throughout the novel is that women are constantly told to be patient, but patience does not actually improve their lives. Instead, patience becomes a way to control women and force them to accept forced marriage, violence, and polygamy. Through the stories of Ramla, […]
I did not expect My Brilliant Friend to stress me out this much, but the relationship between Lenù and Lila is honestly one of the most obsessive, intense friendships I have ever read about. They both seem to be measuring themselves against each other the whole time. I felt like Lenù, especially, was living her […]
One thing that stood out to me most when reading The Book of Chameleons was the idea of identity and how it is seen as something malleable. In the book, identities can be changed, created, or invented from nothing. Félix Ventura’s job is literally creating new identities for his clients. In this way, the book […]
Honestly, this book feels pretty out of place in a romance studies class. The book is based on a real bank robbery and mostly revolves around crime, violence, and a police standoff, so at first glance it doesn’t really feel like a “romance” story at all. But the more I read, the more it started […]
The Trenchcoat by Norman Manea is probably my favourite reading of the course so far. One reason I liked it was that I was finally able to read a story in one sitting. Lately a lot of the readings have felt extra long so it was nice to sit down and finish a story from […]
Reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler felt disorienting right from the start. Instead of easing me into a story, Calvino throws you straight into the act of reading itself. He even addresses “you” as if he is watching you open the book and read the first few pages. At first I found it […]
Reading The Time of the Doves didn’t feel like following a dramatic war story. Instead, it felt like being placed inside someone’s everyday struggle to keep going. The novel follows Natalia (often called Colometa), whose life is shaped not by political speeches or battlefield scenes, but by marriage, poverty, motherhood, and the slow exhausting life […]
Reading Deep Rivers by José María Arguedas kinda messed with my head. It feels less like learning a story and more like learning how to perceive the world differently. Rather than explaining Peru’s colonial history or Indigenous suffering in direct terms, Arguedas filters everything through Ernesto’s body: what he touches, hears, and feels before he […]
When I first finished Nada, my immediate reaction was kind of anticlimactic. After a full year of Andrea’s life in Barcelona, she leaves feeling like she’s taken nothing away from the experience. She didn’t have a crazy transformation, didn’t really take away a clear lesson, and the story ended with no dramatic resolution. Just… nada. […]
