Romance... but not really

 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 t...

 This book was definitely up there among my favourites of this term. It was simultaneously light and dealt with themes that I connected with, so I was able to engage with it more than I could with some other books we read. There were many themes involved in the novel, but the one that resonated with me the most was that of identity. On pages 117 and 118 (of my pdf - not sure what the page numbers are for a physical copy), there is a discussion of nationality and identity. I found it funny that Clarice Lispector was mentioned; though I didn't personally read her book this term, it still felt like a fun little crossover.  As someone who has Iranian heritage, was born and raised in the UK, and is now living in Canada, I've thought a lot about how nationality may or may not be part of our identities. I would still consider myself Iranian if I didn't have citizenship, though I'm not sure that I'll ever consider myself Canadian even if I get the passport. I just think it...

This novel confused me from the moment I read its title. Mainly because I couldn't see the link between Dictatorship-era Spain and the actual Battle of Salamis. I still can't, to be honest. The Battle of Salamis was a naval battle between the Persians and the Greeks like 2500 years ago. When I look it up to try and find an answer to my question, all I get is that it's a "metaphorical allusion". If anyone has any ideas as to why the title of the novel is what it is, please let me know. Otherwise, I really enjoy the blend of fact and fiction, though I often have to remind myself that it isn't meant to be taken literally; kind of like when I watch a biopic and then find out later that lots of the movie was just dramatised and doesn't actually reflect reality. I find the unreliable narrator more likeable in this novel than others we have read with unreliable narrators (such as W, Or The Memory Of Childhood). Maybe because the narrative voice feels stronger her...

 This week's novel stood out to me as being different from the rest we have read. Its subdued horror, as suggested by the narrator, was particularly interesting for me. I found it intriguing how despite holding back on the descriptions of violence, it was still quite chilling to read. I've never really been a fan of horror stories and movies, but in the ones that I have read or watched, I'm more used to having the violence be the star of the show; I get the impression that the director keeps the blood to a minimum for the sake of the studio and/or age ratings. I felt that Bola ñ o could have afforded to go further with the detail if he had wanted to and it wouldn't have felt too out of place, but I'm glad he didn't. While reading the scenes within the university buildings and corridors, I found myself imagining the scenes in my head. That isn't unusual in and of itself, but similarly to how I dream at night, the settings of my imagination varied between buil...

 Similarly to Proust's novel, The Old Gringo was another novel that I already had on my TBR list before starting this class, so I'm glad to have had the opportunity/excuse to read it now. I did enjoy reading it, despite it feeling a little convoluted at times. The relationships in particular were a little difficult to follow because it sometimes felt like things changed and dynamics shifted without me really noticing. Somewhat like accidentally missing a couple episodes of a series and suddenly being confused.  Harriet Winslow's relationships with Arroyo and the Gringo (who we later find is Ambrose Bierce unless you watch the lecture first ) are notably difficult to follow. There were times when I couldn't figure out if Harriet was attracted to Arroyo, or faking it, or liked him, or hated him, or any combination of the four. The Gringo's relationship with her was strange too; an odd in-between of paternal and romantic that I can't quite decipher, though to be fa...

 I first heard of Georges Perec as a young teen scrolling through Tumblr when I stumbled across a post about another novel of his, A Void, where he avoids the letter 'e' throughout the novel. I was pleasantly surprised when I realised that we'd been assigned his work. Similarly to others whose blog posts I have read, I initially struggled with the two storylines but got used to it fairly quickly. Apparently these two storylines are supposed to depend on each other, rendering each one incomplete without the other. Truthfully, I haven't been able to discern why they are so dependent on each other, though I hope to understand the text a little further after some class discussion.  I think an important feature of the text is that it has an unreliable narrator, who is telling this story based on unreliable memories and this fictional world of W that he created in his head. I always think an unreliable narrator can be a refreshing twist on the experience of reading a book bec...

 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...

 Carmen Laforet's Nada felt very modern, and others might disagree with me but I thought it even felt somewhat contemporary. Sure, that might be because the translation was done relatively recently (2008), but I think it's more so to do with its timelessness. The story has so many themes that are fundamentally about people and their relationships to each other; I don't think humans change all that much from one generation to the next, and I reckon many of our problems are the same as they were centuries ago, and will continue to be centuries from now.  I hesitate to delve into these topics too deeply, but two themes that really resonated with me in this book were those surrounding Andrea and Ena's friendship, more specifically the way that Andrea views Ena and puts her on a pedestal, and that of a mother's love.  These two themes fascinate me in different ways. The former reminds me of a friendship that I once experienced a few years ago and so I felt a little uncom...

 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 ...

Louis Aragon's Paris Peasant was certainly an easier read for me than Proust's Swann's Way was. I imagine it is to do with the translation, though of course the writing style of the original author. In fact, I found myself thinking about translation a lot while reading this book. There were parts that had very interesting metaphors and jokes that I would love to see in the original language. I especially noticed this in the F.M.R. section where even the translator made a note that the original pun worked so much better. I suppose this is one of the weaknesses of translation; you can never conserve all the layers of meaning within a word or a phrase because you always have to choose one. If you can find a way to make it work with more than one meaning then you're lucky. Before starting the book, I knew that Aragon was part of the surrealist, avant-garde movement and you can tell. Paris Peasant has been described as a "novel-that-[is]-not-a-novel" and I agree wi...

 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...

Hi everyone! I'm Deeba, and I made this blog for RMST 202 where I'll be putting my reflections and thoughts about the books I will be reading for this course.  In the course introduction it was made clear that the Romance World isn't a real thing, and therefore it belongs to nobody and everybody at the same time. There also is no indication that the texts will be centred around romance in the feelings-y way either; hence the URL "Romance but not really." Truthfully, I find the grading structure of this course quite interesting and I've always wanted to make a blog but never really had anything to focus it on, so hopefully I'll be able to take the bull by the horns and carpe diem (insert all other vaguely-romance-derived phrases). By the way, I'm in first year, hoping to major in International Relations and minor in Commerce. I didn't want to take a class in English Literature because that's what I've already studied before, and I chose this...