Hi Guys! I enjoyed this week’s reading and as we are reading more and more books in this class I feel like it’s becoming easier to read literature. However, I still found this book somewhat difficult to read. I feel like there were a lot of references to Church names, cultural concepts, and traditions which […]
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Being Peruvian definitely shaped how I read this book. I probably would have enjoyed it even more if it had not been midterm season, but I still ended up liking it a lot. Through Ernesto’s inner conflict you can understand a lot about the society around him. He is mestizo, and because he grew up […]
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So, I’ve been sitting with this book for more hours than I’d like to admit. It’s called Nada which literally means “nothing”, and honestly, that’s exactly what it feels like at first. But Carmen has this way of writing a “quiet” story that somehow sits right in your chest. Since the main character and […]
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The whole novel of Nada felt eery to me, like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I suppose this is because of the aftermath of the Spanish civil war, as the lecture video states that the family’s trauma haunts the narrative – so it’s more like the shoe has already dropped, and everything […]
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In grade 11, we read the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, and my jaw dropped through every page as the story played out. Then, I learned about the Oedipus and Electra complexes in psych, and felt a mixture of being unsettled and in disbelief. This book gave me that same feeling all over again (╥﹏╥) and each […]
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Moravia/Agostino’s descriptions felt like both a blessing and a complete curse in this book. There were many beautiful descriptions of the sea and the town that painted a vivid picture, like the “rows of cabins painted in pastel colors”, the “crowded beach”, the “festive buzzing”, and the “sparkling sea…filled with bathers” (pg. 21). That being […]
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Okay, so “Agostino” isn’t your typical vacation read. Sure, it’s set in Italy during the summer, but it’s way more than just tanning and sand. It kinda takes you on this interesting ride through the mind of a 13 year old kid who’s suddenly hit with the first few harsh realities of the adult world […]
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I actually quite liked this one despite how long it was. Though I can’t tell how much of the writing style is Laforet and how much is the translation, it’s by far my favourite so far (though the bar is low). I’m starting to think it may not be the texts that are the issue […]
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Reading Agostino was a very unsettling but yet eye-opening about growing up too quickly, as Moravia shows adolescence not as an exciting transition, but something that I believe a lot of people can relate to which is confusing, and painful. Agosto’s relationship with his mother starts out as a very close one as they would […]
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Wow, Nada was an interesting, interesting read. It follows the story of a young girl post Spanish civil war moving to attend university. Our protagonist Andrea moves in with her extended family who seems to have lost almost everything due to the war, given that they were quite well off before the war. I […]
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