Final Post

I want to say that I greatly enjoyed this class even though it was not what I expected. This was my first time experiencing a class structured like this and I was a bit apprehensive about how it would go but I enjoyed the informality of the blog posts and the classroom activities a lot. For the novels I was split, I loved a lot of the earlier ones we read and hated a lot of the ones later on. My favourites would have to be Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt, Shrouded Woman by Luisa Bombal, and my all-time favourite is Nada by Carmen Laforet. I will be recommending all these titles to my friends in the future as they as introduced some sort of new perspective to what would otherwise be a rather common theme seen in a book. In Roberto Arlt’s book, I like the subversion of expectations that comes from the main character gaining happiness through betrayal. Though I am a firm believer that snitches get stitches I think that this ending made me see the whole book in a different unique way. For Bombal’s Shrouded Woman, the common theme of death is given a refreshing new perspective by making the narrator the dead woman. Finally, for Nada, though I feel that the main character’s insanity from hunger added a distinctive aspect to the novel it doesn't as a whole differ very much from other coming-of-age stories, but I still really love it I can't put my finger on why I just think it's a great novel; It's super entertaining and I found Andrea to be a fun main character to follow.

I think my least favourite books were Money to Burn by Piglia, Time of the Doves by Lispector, and Deep Rivers by Arguedas. I thought Money to Burn was just straight-up whack the whole story felt like I was tripping on LSD, Time of the Doves was just satisfying for me mostly because I am a person who needs a happy ending, and I just found Deep Rivers to be a bit boring. However, I do feel I have learned from this class that there is always an element I can appreciate in a novel even if I hate it. Even though I was thoroughly unimpressed by Time of the Doves the lecture and the group classes did help me appreciate the Lispectors implementation of an author written by an author. Overall I feel I will be less likely to gravitate away from books that don't initially seem like my cup of tea as I never really would have picked up books like Nada or Shrouded Woman.

 My question is what is one unexpected thing this course taught you?