After finishing this book, I felt the same that I did when finishing If on a winter’s night a traveler, the satisfying end to a meta-story and a long journey. It even ends with its own wink to itself: kust as how that book ends with the reader beginning to read the titular book, this ends […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with Uncategorized
*post contains F and T-slurs I enjoyed this book a lot, it was a thrilling read from start to finish and I was always interested in what would happen next in the robbery and pursuit. I also enjoyed it as it being explicitly queer with the Kid and Dorda annd those elements caught my eye; […]
Posted in Blogs, Piglia | Tagged with crime, fiction, gender, identity, representation, sexuality
This short story left me very confused and disoriented, with not much to grasp onto and characters also losing it, like Ioana gesturing towards hidden conspiracies and death that had existed So it was relieving to know that the confusion and paranoia and gradual descent into madness is a feature, not a bug, of the […]
Posted in Blogs, Manea | Tagged with Authoritarianism, identity, language, politics, representation
“I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read,” a third reader says, “but at every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reading a construction […]
Posted in Blogs, Calvino | Tagged with gender, metafiction, narrative, reading
I enjoyed reading this book, I liked how deep it dove into Natalia’s psyche through the stream of consciousness writing. One image I kept circling back to, like in the novel, was from the title, the doves and the birds that keep reappearing. It always feels to me like Natalia is bound by something out […]
Posted in Blogs, Rodoreda | Tagged with
Reading “Deep Rivers” was a challenge for me, possibly the most difficult read so far. I still liked it a lot. But Ernesto was impenetrable to me; he didn’t fit into my preconceived notions of what a protagonist should be like or like. Especially compared to previous books in this course I read like the […]
Posted in Arguedas, Blogs | Tagged with language, narration, reading, youth
I enjoyed reading Agostino, but it’s also a very uncomfortable experience for the reader. My impression that I got while reading: the novel is stopping before anything truly happens in a deliberately unsatisfying way while hinting towards repulsive content. Despite the novella having so many scenes alluding to sexual encounters, I don’t think the word […]
Posted in Blogs, Moravia | Tagged with childhood, desire, love, relationships, sexuality
My first impression of “A Shrouded Woman” was that the many perspectives were really cool: shifting from her POV to the other funeralgoers and even times when it was like she “talked” to others’ narration, like the Father. But the weirdest one is still her own. From what I’ve read, most forms of the post-death […]
Posted in Blogs, Bombal | Tagged with beauty, mortality, perspective, women
Mad Toy: very fun read, did it in a day. Other blogs and the lecture have alluded to the idea that every chapter is centered around books and knowledge in connection to good society’s system. And related to this, every chapter is structured around Silvio’s failure to obtain or use this knowledge, as mentioned in […]
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There’s one common thread in existing discussion about “Combray” that I saw: the book’s difficulty in reading. I agree, it’s a challenging read in the forever long sentences and vivid descriptions of everything and constantly shifting focal points. And as the lecture and conversation video mentions, the story is temporally vague. While there is […]
Posted in Blogs, Proust | Tagged with excess, narration, repetition