SPAN 312

  Hi everyone! I am so shocked that our last week is here! I hope that everyone has had a really good term and wishing you all the best of luck on any exams or papers that you guys have left! This week I chose to read “Fever Dream” by Samanta Schweblin. I personally, like Jon briefly mentioned in the lecture, found it so disorienting. The lack of chapters and context within the book made me really struggle to keep reading and follow along. However, that being said, I think I still enjoyed it? Honestly, the whole time while reading and then after listening to Jon’s lecture I just kept thinking about this film course I’m in this term. The course is about the Anthropocene in Asian and Australian cinema, and I felt like a lot of the films that I watched in this course reflect this disorienting experience, whether through narrative or visuals.  Particularly there was this one super low-budget horror film titled Three Days of Darkness. The majority of the film was almost in comple...

  Hi everyone! I hope you are all having a good start to the week. We are almost done this semester, we can do it!! This week I chose to read My Tender Matador by Pedro Lemebel. Personally, although this book had an interesting story line and dealt with really important themes I found myself struggling to read it. I kept getting pulled out of the trance of the story and had to keep going back to reground myself back into the book. However, I did get some clarification and background on the political scene and attempted assassination from Jon’s lecture which helped me to understand Carlos’ character a bit better. I found his relation with Queen of the Corner to be quite toxic. He was always just using her either for her space to keep his weapons, or as a distraction from getting caught by the police checkpoint, and always just coming and going as he pleased. I think it was obvious that she was in love with him from the start yet he kept on controlling her for his own personal benefi...

  Hi everyone! I hope you all had a nice weekend and are having a good sunny start to the week! This week I chose to read A Distant Star written by Roberto Bolaño. I have to say this may be the book I enjoyed the most so far. The majority of the book felt like a really long episode of Criminal Minds, which is one of my favourite shows. I just felt kinda hooked from the beginning with all the talk about the arts, the poet society, and the obsession with the twins. I really enjoyed how this book used descriptive language, as I felt like I have been looking for that in the past couple of books as I need it to make a real clear image in my head of the events. I have to say the first killing of the aunt of the Garmendia sisters kind of took me by surprise. I was expecting a mystery murder type book but not so quick off the bat. However, I probably should have expected that it would be the character who seemed like an outcast from the rest of the poets, and had a particular liking toward...

  Hi guys! I hope you guys are all having a good start to your week so far. This week's reading felt very emotional and dealt with some serious topics that are also very relevant today in Canada. I think it is really important to recognize the struggles discussed in I, Rigoberta Menchú, as not everyone has the same or similar experiences to those of the family within the book. I think that this book put a lot of things in perspective for me and how important it is to recognize and appreciate stories of those from different cultures, history’s, backgrounds from us as it can make us more aware of societal injustices that we see in our everyday lives. Although the book deals with widely important topics about social injustice, land and people exploitation, and a clear class hierarchy, the book is written in a way that is easy to understand. I feel like most of the time with books that are so dense in themes and topics I typically have a really hard time understanding and grasping the ...

  Hi everyone! I hope everyone is having a great start to their week. This week I chose to read Mario Vargas Llosa’s Captain Pantoja and the Special Service and I think I enjoyed it? I found some parts of the novel such as the objectification of women and the rapes to be disturbing, but other parts I actually really enjoyed. I, like a few others have mentioned in their blogs, was also surprised to hear about the history of the military and their actions at the time as Jon mentioned in his lecture. I think it was the things like this that made me question the novel's true genre and if comedy or dark comedy was the right way to describe it. There were a few other times where I was a bit confused as to what was going on as the novel involved a lot of different captains, colonels, and lieutenants, but it was easier to follow along than 100 Years of Solitude.  I think the part that I enjoyed the most and found the most relatable was the lengthy gossip letter that Pochita wrote to...

  Hi everyone! I hope everyone is having a good start to their week. The end of this novel felt like quite a different adventure than the first section did. For starters I was starting to really understand the grasp of the expansion of Macondo, it was almost as if capitalism was starting to grow in the town. With the introduction of the banana plantation and the train for ice, we start to understand how important this growth of the town is, which ultimately may have led to its collapse. I also was thinking about magic realism when these advances were happening to the city as the people seemed to be more fascinated with the engineers and builders of the train and plantation than of the magic carpet or the magnet we talked about last class.  Although I was still lost in memorizing the family names and which Aurelianos is which, I was starting to really understand the idea of repetition and cycles within the novel. It seems as though every generation was dealing with a slightly...