A la mitad del curso

Spanish 490 “Bad Latin-American Literature” has been a very interesting course so far. I especially like Jon’s sarcasm toward The Alchemist. The debate we had in class on The Alchemist was the most fun I’ve had in a class before. I was assigned to the “for” group which I thought was going to be impossible, but it was actually really easy to come up with bogus claims that the book was actually good.
The books in this class have been bad, which is good, because this is a course on bad literature. Personally I really disliked Eva Luna, it was quite a struggle to read. It kept going on and on describing Eva’s day to day life which was very boring to read. The Alchemist on the other hand was a really easy read, entertaining, and if taken to be lightly (is the key here) a good book. The moment a reader begins to analyize the logic of this book is when one could refer to it as bad literature because the logic simply doesn’t make any sense. But if you just want a quick philosophical read, The Alchemist is worth checking out. Como Agua Para Chocolate. What can I say. I found it to be hard to read, not in terms of the difficulty of language, but in terms of its content. I still have the last chapter to read, and I am putting it off because I find it painfully boring. I usually don’t read fiction novels because I don’t like reading about something if it is not true. If I can convince myself that the content in a ficticous book could possibly happen then I may continue reading, but in this case with CAPC when people begin to burn and no one questions why, I just shake my head. Besides that, the telenovela aspect of this book was at times entertaining to read, and I liked how Esquivel incorporated mexican cuisine into Tita’s daily life experiences.
The blogs have been great. I’ve really enjoyed reading about what other people think of these books we are reading. I also applaud the people who stand up for their views when they think some of these books are good literature. I find it hard sometimes to be objective in this course when evaluating a work. Sometimes we dislike things for no good reason, don’t we? Haha, anyways I’m really enjoying this course, and looking forward to the remainder.