Student Blogs

When reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, my strongest impression was that I was constantly moving between different universes. The transitions were sudden and unexpected, almost like shifting through dreams. Each time I became fully immersed in a story, it would abruptly stop and another novel would begin. The experience felt like going […] read full post >>

It's my own desire / it's my own remorse / Help me to decide / Help me make the / Most of freedom and of pleasure / Nothing ever lasts forever / Everybody wants to rule the world read full post >>

Now that I have finished this novel, I noticed that it starts with “all the world began with a yes” (3) and the last word is also “yes” (77). Overall, I thought this book was interesting in that the author also seems to be a character himself. He knows his goal for writing is to […] read full post >>

 Wow. This was just sad. Are you kidding me? She gets hit by a car and dies after all of that? C’mon Rodrigo, you could’ve come up with a better than that. Macabea was a poor, naive, invisible girl who literally never complained and didn’t feel th... read full post >>

 Wow. This was just sad. Are you kidding me? She gets hit by a car and dies after all of that? C’mon Rodrigo, you could’ve come up with a better than that. Macabea was a poor, naive, invisible girl who literally never complained and didn’t feel th... read full post >>

Macabéa, ridiculed, bullied, deemed irrelevant. She “wasn’t an idiot but she had the pure happiness of idiots” (60).  She “got up early in order to have more time to do nothing” (26). She “didn’t know what she was just as a dog doesn’t know it’s dog” (19). She was “a hair in the soup [that] […] read full post >>

Reading Hour of the Star kind of made me wish that I, too, was hit by a Mercedes. The narrator’s incessant yapping in the beginning made it really hard for me to get into this book, which is honestly kind of an achievement given how short this story is. And then, when we finally get […] read full post >>

THE WRITER: The desire for transcendence is itself a transcendent aspect of human nature, because it entails an already-present awareness of the transcendent, and a recognition of the possibility of becoming transcendent. The writer, Rodrigo, desires f... read full post >>

“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 […] read full post >>

It is scarily interesting how much Natalia’s nickname Colometa foreshadowed the way her life would turn out to be and how her first husband, Quimet would later treat her. Pigeons, being wild animals that became domesticated for human usage align much with what the protagonist experiences after marrying Quimet. She is formed into the ideal wife and forced to care... read full post >>

HELLOOOOOO… So, I finished The Time of the Doves (even tho I was in a whole other country), and honestly, I’m still trying to figure out how a book can be both incredibly simple and emotionally chaotic at the same time. Half the time I felt like I was eavesdropping on someone mumbling to themselves […] read full post >>

I felt that the narration of this text was very closely tied to Natalia’s inner thoughts. read full post >>

I enjoyed reading this week’s book by Merce Rodoreda thoroughly. The protagonist, Natalia is challenged constantly throughout this book right from the beginning when she is almost forcefully scooped up into a relationship with Quimet, who in my opinion is one of the most unpleasant characters as of yet, right behind Saro the paedo from […] read full post >>

 The Time of the Doves by Merce Rodoreda is such an interesting read and is honestly one of my fav reads so far throughout this course! The book centres around Natalia’s hardships of poverty and despair. This is evident through the quote in the pr... read full post >>

 The Time of the Doves by Merce Rodoreda is such an interesting read and is honestly one of my fav reads so far throughout this course! The book centres around Natalia’s hardships of poverty and despair. This is evident through the quote in the pr... read full post >>