Student Blogs

At first glance, the title of this novel caught my attention. I really wanted to leave off this semester on a more positive note – and thought that any novel to do with dreams must do so! This was actually one of my favorite books we have read this semester. I enjoyed every single page […] read full post >>

Amulet written by the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño is a great book! I liked reading it from start and never found myself counting how many pages they were left until I got to the end. Similar to many of the books we have read I noticed the theme of ‘memory’ coming up again. From the […] read full post >>

I liked this book, the intertwining storylines of politics, romance, and dreams made it an interesting read. While the dreaming and romantic narratives provided interesting psychological thought and emotional elements, the commentary on the political tension was my favorite element of this book. I enjoyed that the dream narrative was not imposed upon by Freud’s […] read full post >>

Cercas’ “Soldier of Salamis has a bewildering jigsaw puzzle- like structure and form, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It invited the reader to accompany the narrator on his quest to piece together fragmented information from the past, through archives, oral history … Continue reading → read full post >>

This week we were tasked with reading the Soldier of Salamis; I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I just did not enjoy this book. It is a book that disinterested me, was too long, and was kind of confusing at times. I hate to be like this, and will try my best to write […] read full post >>

It feels nice to be somewhat stationary in our reading journey as it’s been a while since we’ve last read... read full post >>

I see a steady decline in my enjoyment of these readings but it is much more blamed on final burnout rather than the quality of the books. I hope my blog posts continue to attempt to give them justice as we have discussed; the authors might not be bigger than us but their books are. […] read full post >>

I thought this novel, like all the other novels assigned for this course, to be interesting. Although this novel is supposed to be fiction, it can also be classified as an autobiographical work because it incorporates several autobiographical elements through the overlap of the life of the real writer and his fictional counterpart. Because it […] read full post >>

In Javier Cercas’ Soldiers of Salamis, Cercas takes us through the emotional and mental struggle of war, and in particular the Spanish Civil war. While the title of the book, and indeed the setting of the novel would suggest to us, the audience, that the war described in the book takes place vaguely in the […] read full post >>

Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas was a somewhat interesting novel, but I cannot say I particularly enjoyed the plot. I found the narration to have a very slow rhythm which didn’t keep me engaged and the many specific details … Continue reading → read full post >>

Hey Everyone,  Writing this week’s blog post has been the absolute worst for me. To start off, I read and completed my blog post for next week by accident. Then, WordPress stopped working. Anyways, I found this reading really interesting. I finished it in about 3 separate sittings (with some short breaks on my phone), […] read full post >>

Hi Everyone! In this week’s blog post I am going to be reflecting on Soldiers of Salamis, a novel written... read full post >>

Javier Cercas’s Soldiers of Salamis was really unique in how it seemed to blur lines between reality, history, and fiction and pose interesting questions about knowability in the process. Throughout the first part, I felt that the book was more “lifelike” than many of the others I’ve read, probably because it takes place more recently and […] read full post >>

This week’s book also continued with the theme of war that we have been exploring in other novels.  The recent... read full post >>

You all know that this was coming, but I was biased coming into the book because it was written in... read full post >>