RMST 202

RMST was a great course that really pushed me to read new things and explore new ideas throughout the semester. If I’m being completely honest, I was a little skeptical going into the course. I haven’t taken many literature classes during my degree and really disliked the English classes that I had to take during high school. That being said, the low stakes approach to learning and the opportunity to read books for the sake of reading books was very refreshing. I think that a lot of students (myself very much included) get very jaded about reading with the sheer volume of course readings we get assigned every week so it was nice to get to read things that weren’t academic papers. It was almost a little fun to get to read things that were completely outside of my field and I would most likely have never read otherwise. In a bit of a contradiction to what I said above, I really enjoyed reading books that connected in some way with my degree. I study Political Science, and so much of poli

“Faces in the Crowd” was not the quick and fun read I was hoping for during finals. It was a messy, convoluted and oft infuriating exercise in patience that felt a little like reading the film Inception. The book centres around the story of a woman living in Mexico City who is writing a (fictional?) autobiography about her younger self in New York City. The novel frequently flips back and forth between the present day and the woman’s story in New York. This younger version of the woman lives a largely care-free lifestyle, working as a reader and translator. She lives unapologetically, going all over the city while meeting new people and pursuing her own creative pursuits. She has all sorts of friends and new and interesting people are constantly coming in and out of her apartment.  This stands in stark contrast to the life in which the author is living today, where she rarely leaves her house and living in an imperfect marriage. It sort of seems as though she longs for what could have