RMST studies - blog post 1

What an interesting read! Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Although it did take quite some time to get through, I was always excited to see what came next. I will admit, I found it difficult at some points to follow the specific characters with their names as well as locations because there was a fair bit of jumping around. However, I found that as I continued to read, I began to make more sense of everything. The different aspects began to fit together and add to one another.  Dreams: Firstly, as the title points to, dreams and ‘dreamers’. This was a huge theme in this novel. Each character seemed to have a different experience with dreams and attributed different meanings to them. A couple of quotes referring to dreaming that stood out to me were  “Dreams are always echos of something” p. (105) and  “Dreaming is rehearsing reality from the comfort of our own beds” p. (108).  This topic is fascinating to me.  Relationships: Daniel our narrator was one that ...

I was initially very intrigued by this story. I was excited that it was under the category or ‘horror’ as this is not really a genre we've read yet in this class.  The scene in the first section of the book where the soldiers are taking over the university reminded me a lot of memories from lockdown drills in school and more specifically what to do if you happen to be stuck in a stall at the time of entry of whoever (danger). I think the author did an excellent job of illustrating that scene and the position she held to avoid being seen.  After that, the story began to head in the direction of explaining short stories and memories she had accumulated over her life. There were many! Some of the time I would get a little lost in the details of these stories, but for the most part they were very entertaining. It is safe to say that her life was interesting and deviated a fair bit from any sort of norm. She came off as a free spirit. Auxillio did not seem to have any sort of oblig...

My thoughts on the Trench coat… Although I was definitely feeling lost a lot of the time reading this novel, I did enjoy it. I think I quickly understood that the point of this story was not to fully understand every little conversation that was being exchanged, or what these characters were up to. Rather, it was to understand that these conversations had to be secret and discrete, given the country and time they were living in.  This story was unfolding in a time where the government seemed to have a lot of control of its citizens. For example, gas was limited to 30 litres a month (and could sometimes be bribed with a tip, sometimes not and if you had extra money, of course). There was also extreme censorship on information released to the people, and if something abnormal popped up there was a question in regards to “how did that slip past the censor?”.  One quote that stood out to me as well and was a bit disturbing to read was “I'll be tall, healthy, clean and neat, withou...

This week I read W, or the memory of a childhood. This novel was different from others we had read in previous weeks, and unlike anything I had really read before. When I was starting this novel, the double story writing style was confusing at times. The fact that it was differentiated by font did help for sure.I was struggling to find the correlation between the two stories and felt like I was jumping from one book to another each time it switched over. Also, it often felt like we were given a lot of additional background details that perhaps helped visualize something like a picture, but the descriptions seemed to drag on longer than necessary.  It was definitely easier for me to engage in the story based on the child growing up during the time of war and the complexity of his life. He lost his parents at a young age, and bounced around different living arrangements a lot of the time. From what he recalls, and the memories that he does have, it seemed like a very rough time to gr...

  The time of doves blog post This week I chose to read the time of the doves. When I first began to read this novel, it was definitely a bit more difficult for me to engage myself. I found it more challenging and less of a page turner in comparison to Agostino or Bonjour Tristesse. Thankfully it was ‘reading’ week, because it ended up taking me the whole week on/off with splitting up the text. But overall, I found the storyline to be a bit more depressing for sure, which could partially explain why it took me longer than normal.  What stood out the most to me was the relationship between the characters Quimet and Natalia. It was definitely frustrating to read their relationship and to see the type of power he held over her. From the start, he was following his own agenda and would not be considerate for the time she spent waiting for him, his schedule and orders,. Not only that, but he was disrespectful towards his mother which in turn makes sense in regards to his aggressive...

This week I chose to read ‘Bonjour Tristesse’ by Sagan. I think initially what attracted me toward this read was the fact that the title was French, which I love to read. Overall, I did really enjoy this read quite a bit, but I can sympathize with others if they did not.  Cecile is a young girl who spends most of her time accompanied by her father, who is a widow. Her father finds happiness through short-lived relationships with women that never seem to last too long or be too serious. Beginning their vacation by the ocean, they are accompanied by Elsa, a young woman who is Cecile's father's Raymond's current interest. Cecile has mixed feelings about Elsa, but I sense that she knew it wouldn't last. However, not long after they are joined by Anne, an old friend of Cecile’s mom. The four of them live in the beachside house, where Elsa and Raymond share a bedroom. But that doesn't last. To keep it brief, it does not take long for Raymond’s attention to shift towards A...