conclusion!!!!!!!!!!!

It's so hard to believe that the term is almost over!! I feel like I'm not ready for it to end yet</3 There are still so many books I wanna read and post about lol!! Lots more I wanna complain about!!! At some point during the class I was waiting for a book that would make me feel happy instead of despair and frustration, but none of them made me feel that way. I still want to go to weekly discussions and hear other people’s interpretation of the reading and how it made them feel. Hearing other people’s perspectives was extremely interesting, all of their input was super valuable.

I’d sort of fallen behind on reading all my books, and this class got me back into the habit of reading again!! I can get through like multiple books in a day and it’s so fun. I’d been lying to myself, telling myself I had no time to read outside of class but that was not true. I had just been lying to myself!! 

My favourite works so far have been “The Trenchcoat”, “Money to Burn”. And “The Shrouded Woman”. All of these books were fascinating, these 3 in particular spoke to me. Money to Burn had the most fun and interesting characters and plotline. The Shrouded Woman was so fun to read, a lot of it was super dramatic if it felt like a soap opera! Even if I didn’t understand some things it was still fun to read. It was full of infuriating characters that the main character knew in her life, so it was bad.

With Money to Burn, the characters were so unapologetically themselves with no regard for what the general public seems to think. The action in the book is simply wonderful, I had never read about an action sequence that was so entertaining.

I’ve been extremely satisfied with this course's reading list and I’m glad to have discovered new writers and old ones. All the books in this course were brand new and unfamiliar to me, I’m glad to have broadened my horizons. A lot of works that are considered literature a lot of the time are very eurocentric! I’m glad to have read masterpieces from places other than Europe!  I even feel like giving Proust another try at some point, maybe I won’t hate it. 

I had such an awesome time in this course and I’m gonna miss it lots! Thank you so much Professor Jon, Julián and Daniel! You guys were so awesome!!!!!

Love Me Tender

Reading “Love Me Tender” was a very interesting experience. The writing felt a bit similar to “The Book of Chameleons” in that some of the chapters are extremely short and the narration is simple to understand.

I like that Constance decided to live her life as authentically as she possibly could, not bending over for someone else’s needs. She’s so very courageous for doing so but it sort of felt like something was lacking, and I feel maybe I am just saying that because society has made me believe that there is something else to be desired. Books and life don’t really need to be dramatic, sometimes it just felt as if Constance was just gliding through life rather than really enjoying it!! Everything just felt a bit dull.

A thing I found interesting is that she constantly compares herself to men and sort of does things that men stereotypically do. When it came to parenting and her relationship with Paul, she would compare herself to an absent father. Then her relationships with other women are sort of like how SOME men treat women. She’s completely emotionally absent but that’s technically fair because she seems to be that way with everything else. Then there’s the way she’ll talk about the women, she won’t bother remembering their names or the details of their life that they share with her. She treats them like a quick fuck and a place to stay because that’s really all they are to her. The way she treats these women is unfortunate. I won’t say that she doesn’t make an effort in all her relationships because she does to some extent for her son. She tries to perform so they would let her see her son, she throws out the books that supposedly reflected poorly on her character although near the end she ultimately decides that maybe the effort isn’t going to change anything and that it was okay to move on with her life.

Every mention of Laurent made me upset, the first few of his appearances when she tells him she’s into women and despite knowing that fact he still tries to initiate something with her just goes to show how inconsiderate and disrespectful he is 💀‼️Then going as far as to lying when he realises that she’s into women and making it so she can’t see her son is just horrible. This guy sucks‼️Poisoning a son against his mother💔. I guess it just goes to show how marginalised people will often be in the weaker position when it comes to formal and informal institutions. I was really hoping that Constance would be able to have a somewhat good relationship with her son, but maybe a lack of a relationship isn’t so bad when compared to active resentment.

Question: Do you think that she’s happy with the decisions she’s made or even happy with her life in general?