RMST 202

This week, the book I read was Bonjour Tristesse. I have to say, out of all the books that I have read thus far in this class, this was one of the ones I enjoyed the most. It was a very easy, fun story to read and I believe that had something to do with the relatability of the main character’s age and personality. I honestly truly enjoyed reading Cécile as a character. She is a naive, young, negligent and intense girl. As she made her plans and plotted against Anne and her father, it seemed as if she was pretty careless with her actions. She kept changing her mind on whether or not she wanted to continue carrying out her plan, and because of her indecisiveness, she kind of neglected the consequences that resulted from her actions. She would leave Cyril and Elsa in the dark by not giving them an update on the plan for days if she felt like it and just used them as chess pieces in her game. She seems to represent the very essence of a seventeen year old girl who has been spoiled with the...

This week, I chose to read Agostino over the other option based on a brief summary of this short book. I thought that Agostino sounded more interesting. This story explores the idea of virginity (both sexually and in terms of being young and inexperienced in life), awakening, love, identity, sensuality, adolescence and adulthood. I think I would have had a very different experience reading this text if I was younger or even the same age as the narrator, but reading it now as an 18 year old, I feel like an adult observing the moment of awakening of a new teenager and I honestly secretly felt relieved that I've already passed that phase of my growth. What I mainly got from him was confusion - and the teenage years are definitely some of the most confusing times of our childhoods. Emotions and hormones run high and new doors are opening, and it's when kids start to realize how much deeper life goes than the simple pleasures of children's play.  18 isn't even that old, an...

This book was a quick read. Overall,  it was concise and captivating. A few of the most prominent themes that stood out from this text are as follows: love, the value of women in terms of love, and the expectations that are placed on people based on the gender roles of society.  Almost every single description or mention of any women in this text was somehow related to their physical appearance. It heavily focused on the idea that the value of a woman rests primarily on how beautiful they are according to the standards of society and in particular, the standards of the men in society. The men weighed their potential partners as candidates for becoming their wives and the mothers of their children based first and foremost on their attractiveness. There were a ton of details centered around skin, the colour and shape of their eyes, their hair, their grace and their bodies. I came away from this text with the feeling that while I didn't learn enough about the profound, substantia...

This book was quite a mind-bending trip. Fun to read, but also made no sense. I liked it.  The main feeling that I got from the narrator was a sense of nostalgia, a sense of time passing way too fast for his liking. As he took us on a tour of the various, curious little shops and stores around the neighborhood, I felt a desperation to hold onto each little moment that he was showing us in perfect preservation for as long as I could. The way he described each place in such immense, careful detail made me feel sad knowing that they were soon to be demolished and replaced. The word ephemeral kept coming to mind throughout my reading of this book. I thought about how the older I get, the faster time seems to fly by. When I was a small kid, I wanted nothing more than to grow up and get to what I thought was going to be the beginning of my life. What I didn't know then was that when I finally grew up, I would want nothing more than to go back and experience the little mundane moments of ...

I found the writing of this book very entrancing. The language and the long descriptions (just for the simple act of going to sleep!) lulled me into a feeling of peace and contentment. That said, I could only read it when my brain was fully focused because this seems like a novel where one can easily find themselves drowning in the amount of words that are written into a single sentence.  In the introduction, the author described how tricky it is to translate texts such as these, where every word has a specific significance to the story and in the particular imagery that they are meant to portray. Certain words or sayings don't translate exactly from French to English because every language has its own unique complexities. This is indicative of the nuance that exists in each human language - it is what makes spoken word difficult but also what makes it beautiful. No one person will ever be able to experience the intricacies of every language that exists, but we do have the privileg...

Hello!  My name is Lisa Fylypchuk and I am a first year student in the Faculty of Arts. I am in this faculty because I really enjoy classes like politics and philosophy, much more than subjects like science and business. If everything goes well (meaning if I can get the grades), in the future, I hope to major in political science. The plan after that has yet to be determined but I still have time to figure it out since I'm only in first year.  I was born and raised in Calgary Alberta, just one province over from BC. I chose this university for the quality of education and I am really excited to be studying here. I've only been here one semester so far but I feel I've already learned a lot, not necessarily just in school but also about living independently away from home for the first time.  I initially considered romance studies solely because I was looking for a class to fulfill my literature requirement, but after reading the course description (and even more so after t...