RMST 202 Blog

 Week 4's reading is The Shrouded Women by María Luisa Bombal, a story told in first person by narrator Ana Maria. She switches from reflecting on and recounting her life, to the present looking at her dead body, and seeing the people from throughout her life visit her. She describes her relationships from her first love to her last, her friendships, her family, and her children. I found the short novel simple and easy to read, yet very descriptive and tragic. While there are brief happy moments, Ana Maria's consideration of the past focuses on unhappy things. It seems as though she is dwelling on the bad moments, and ultimately accepting of her death, to be rid of the struggles of life. I wouldn't say that any of the characters mentioned were ultimately happy either. Maria Griselda was unhappy with her beauty, in ways blaming it for Silvia's suicide. All of the marriages were miserable and contained infidelity. For example, Rodolfo and Anita as well as Ana Maria and An...

Week 3's read is Nadja by André Breton, a semi-autobiographical novel following the authors fascination with a women, Nadja. It is set in France and includes and explores the ideas of surrealism. The semi-autobiographical nature of this reading created a structure unlike anything I have ever read before. It felt like I was reading the authors stream of consciousness, or diary, in all his opinions of the places, plays, and people described. One part I really liked about this reading was the inclusion of photos of the places and people referenced. They are all French buildings and characters, that helped to remind me that I was reading about real people, places and events. I felt like I was able to imagine the time period in which this story takes place better. Furthermore, out of all the romance languages we are going to study in this class, I am most familiar with French. While I would not call myself fluent, I did study it for enough years that I enjoyed reading the excerpts that ...

This weeks assigned reading is Proust's Swann's Way, specifically "Combray", a 1913 novel originally written in French. I initially had trouble getting into this book. I started off reading the introduction and writing notes about it, but I quickly realized I could not get into the book if I was sitting here thinking about the background. I had to just immerse myself into the words. Remembering throughout the reading that I would later be obliged to write a 400-500 word post about my thoughts made it difficult to enjoy the reading because I was just thinking about what I could possibly write about. In fact, while I was reading, I even jotted down this note "difficult to read and forget about the homework assigned," which has later prompted me to write this section. After this initial realization I tried to refrain from stopping reading and jotting down notes, and while I failed a few times, this did help me to actually get through the reading. One other thin...

Hello everyone! My name is Samantha Burton and I am a second year student in the faculty of arts intending to major in either Economics or Political Science. I was born and raised in Kingston, Ontario but I tell people I am from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. This is because I moved there in grade 9 and stayed for all of high school, so about four years, before choosing to come to Vancouver to university. My parents still live there so I return back to work in Yellowknife during summers. While I was pretty unhappy to move so far up north at first, I learned to love it and am now grateful that I got to experience a new place and its culture.  I loved reading in all my spare time as a kid, but as school and life got busier over the years I found myself reading a lot less. Now, I only pick up a book every once in a while, so I'm excited to get back into reading in this class. When I do read in my own time, it is always something that is current in pop culture, and it is never sim...