the end of a chapter, but not the whole story

-

 We're done! This term was as good as I hoped it would be, and this class definitely contributed to it. Now, let me preface this blog post by saying that I hope/intend/plan to keep this blog going. As I mentioned in my introductory post, I'd been looking for a push to start a blog for quite a few years now, and I don't want to let my current momentum to stop. That said, I'm not entirely sure what to write about. Should I continue writing about the books I read? Should I branch out and write about other things? If you have any suggestions then please let me know!

My favourite books this term were probably The Society of Reluctant Dreamers by Jose Agualusa, and The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal. I thought they were engaging and enjoyable, and Nada by Carmen Laforet also gets a shoutout too. My least favourites were probably Paris Peasant and W Or A Memory of Childhood. I found them a little confusing and I never really got into the plots. 

Overall, I'm glad I took this class. Though it was primarily to fulfil the literature credits, I would have liked to take it anyway. In my introductory post, I thought that my favourite novels would be the ones about revolution and power, with a special attention to the Spanish Civil War. Having reached the end, I don't think I was wrong, per se. Nada was set in Spain around the time of the war, and I did like it. However, the other books that were more directly about revolution such as The Old Gringo or Soldiers of Salamis didn't quite enamour me as much as I expected. What does that say about me? Probably not much, to be fair. Maybe that I enjoy books with strong characterisation and more inter-character relationships. 

As already mentioned, a dominant theme throughout the novels we've read this term is that of memory. Hopefully this blog will serve to keep my memories of these books fresh. I wish I could say that I was able to integrate reading these books sensibly into my daily routine, but honestly, I treated it a little like my other classes in that I would leave the books to the last couple days of the week and cram them in rather than reading them incrementally throughout the week. Perhaps if I'd contracted for fewer books then I would've been more organic about my reading, but hey this is what I signed up for. All in all, I'm just glad that I took this course and was held accountable for reading more books. I still have to take another literature class for graduation requirements and after this one, I'm definitely looking forward to it. 

I've had a great time taking this class and writing this blog, and again - if you have any suggestions for what I could write about in the future please let me know! (and keep the link to this website handy!)

Comments

  1. PatricioApril 4, 2022 at 3:55 PM

    Hello Deeba!
    What an excellent idea to continue with this blog, and I am glad that this course may have been the trigger. Sometimes we need a little push to get started. And this may indeed be to keep the memory of the books you are reading. How appropriate with this course!
    It was a pleasure having you in class and reading your blogs.
    Take care

    ReplyDelete
  2. c.cApril 4, 2022 at 4:25 PM

    ok blog post idea: buy the scariest-looking mathematics or science textbook you can find, read it, and then analyze it in a post as if you were Jon. Seems like a lot of fun

    ReplyDelete
  3. harshi jhaveriApril 6, 2022 at 9:32 PM

    Hi Deeba!
    It's such a great idea to keep writing blog posts and keep this website alive!! Can I just say, every week, I always looked forward to reading your blog titles. They never failed to make me smile –always so creative and quirky, I love:) Your style of writing is so conversational and causal, definitely makes for a perfect blog. Although I can't think of any specific topics at the moment, I look forward to sneaking back to this website in the future and see where you decided to take it :p

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Shrouded Woman - How dead is dead?

-
 The Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal has been my favourite of the books we have read so far. I certainly found it the most compelling, and recognised many of the themes that were going on. I think the theme that most stood out to me was that of realisation. We as people tend to be our most sober around death, and you often hear people talking about their realisations of what really matters in life and how they want to live each passing day only after being confronted with mortality; be it their own or someone dear to them. Bombal manages to take this theme and subvert it by showing that while those who live are faced with hard-hitting realisations, so are the dead.  The regret of wasted time is one that we have all felt (I reckon it's one of the most universal regrets), including Ana Maria. She is struck by this realisation when she is reunited with her first love, only to realise that they both loved each other despite all the years they'd been apart. Her cry of "Oh ...
Read more

bonjour tristesse my old friend

-
 Of all the books on the reading list, this is the only one I've read before. In fact, I studied it in the original language as part of my French A-Level just before I left the UK. And to be honest, I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.  I feel sorry for Cecile, but I just know that I would find her incredibly irritating if I had the misfortune of encountering her in real life. That being said, the book brings such vivid images of an upscale, movie-like experience of the French Riviera that I appreciate it just for that. I also think it's kind of fun that the book was so controversial upon its release. They just weren't ready for Cecile's unladylike-ness or for all the raunchy behaviour going on. As I mentioned, I don't really like Cecile. In the book she's 17, Sagan herself was 18 at the time of publication, I myself was 17 when I read it for the first time, and at the ripe old age of 20 I can make the executive, yet humble, declaration that w...
Read more

Swann's Way - making my ability to read feel like Proust without the Po

-
 Let me preface all this by saying that I did not understand what I was reading, and this was further emphasised to me when I read the sparknotes pages after finishing " Combray ". I really wanted to fall in love with this text. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust has an almost revered place in my home; my stepdad, who is at the beloved centre of our family first read Swann's Way when he was my current age (20), albeit in the Persian translation. Since then, he has read it in English too, and is learning French for the sole purpose of being able to read all seven volumes of this masterful novel in the original language. I'm not kidding, Proust is the reason why he is learning French, and why the act of language-learning is a constant for us all. I didn't understand what was going on at all. I didn't even realise that things were going on. I didn't pick up a plot, I couldn't follow the paragraph-long sentences—may I refer to a 192-word long sente...
Read more