Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
TheBrockUEnglishMajor

TheBrockUEnglishMajor

Joined May 2016

Can lit nerd 🤓 Love Atwood, Ondaatje, Coupland, and many others. Let's talk about 📚
quote
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image

“Who wants to read about sisters? Gay life fascinated you only because it is the life you were condemned to live . . . Canons of taste must be observed, darling . . . And the story of a boy‘s love for a boy will never capture the world‘s heart as the story of a boy‘s love for a girl. (Or a boy‘s love for his DOG)” (Holleran 14-15).

quote
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image

“Like the high unescapable eye / Of the eagle / Under whose beam / The shadow-swift hare can‘t hide / Pressed flat to the floor / Of a leafy wood / The loitering eye looks once / And kills” (Oswald 18). Chilling

quote
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image

“How do the little people fare in a war between big powers? In answer, the Swahili proverb says, ‘When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.‘” (Vassanji, 149). The quotation captures the struggle of African and Indian people colonized by Europeans during the First World War

RaimeyGallant Great proverb. 5y
6 likes1 stack add1 comment
quote
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image

“The man who arouses conflict in his own people / is clanless, lawless, and homeless among all men” (Homer, Id, book 9, lines 54-55). Nestor speaks. As problematic as this statement is, it‘s cool to think about so I‘m quoting it for reference.

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
White is for Witching | Helen Oyeyemi
post image

Look what came in the mail 😍😍😍

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
The Jew of Malta | Christopher Marlowe
post image

February reading wrap up! Goals for next month: 10 books! I can do it!

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image

LeahBergen The tagged book is one of the few graphic novels I‘ve read. It‘s wonderful! 6y
TheBrockUEnglishMajor @LeahBergen I really liked it. It was simple in the best kind of way. 6y
4 likes2 comments
review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Dracula | Bram Stoker
Pickpick

Not too bad considering I‘m not huge on gothic lit.

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Night Film: A Novel | Marisha Pessl
Panpan

The payoff was not worth the 500 + pages it took to get there.

quote
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
To the Lighthouse | Virginia Woolf
post image

“A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it” (Woolf, TTL, 50).

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image
Pickpick

This new introduction of Chaucer is brilliant. David Wallace is surprisingly funny, and engaging and treats Chaucer‘s material with care and relevance. I wasn‘t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did but Wallace‘s writing makes critical study of Chaucer an exciting and entertaining discipline. Wallace covers so much ground in so little space, including Chaucer‘s poetics, gender, race, religion, and modern responses to the Medieval source.

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image

3 likes1 stack add
blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Dracula | Bram Stoker
post image

Time for the only seasonal reading I participate in! Spooky time 😃

7 likes1 stack add
blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Night Film: A Novel | Marisha Pessl
post image

October reads

7 likes1 stack add
review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Mary Reilly | Valerie Martin
Mehso-so

While I enjoyed the suspense and the playful intertextuality of this novel to the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I find Mary's character to be incredibly flat and self deprecating at times. What should have been a subversive shift from the original narrative which is told by an upper class male (Mr. Utterson) to a servant class maid, is limited by Mary's lack of agency and arc.

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Pickpick

Always a great read for students of psychoanalysis and gothic fiction.

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Pickpick

An important work of late 18th century literature that's both totally accessible and insightful. Widely considered one of the first earliest slave Narratives, Equiano's memoir is gruelling in its depiction of the slave trade, the middle passage, and the fight for freedom which didn't end at the official purchase from a master.

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov
post image

Love this podcast! Always loved thug notes and no matter how much formal education I complete I always will #bookpodcast #podcast #podcasts #thugnotes #bannedbooks

Heideschrampf I just discovered this! Awesome! 6y
14 likes1 comment
quote
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Playing in the Dark | Toni Morrison
post image

Toni Morrison dropping some truth bombs all over Huckleberry Finn. The scene between Tom, Huck, and Jim near the end of the novel was always one that I found to be disturbing and complicated the entire novel for me. I'm glad to see Morrison analyze it with sophistication and clarity. #books #tonimorrison #americanlit #criticism #literarycriticism

quote
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
The English Patient | Michael Ondaatje
post image

"Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations . . . The desert could not be claimed or owned - it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names before Canterbury existed" (Ondaatje, 138-139).

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Microserfs: A Novel | Douglas Coupland
post image
Pickpick

Holy moly this was incredible. Surprisingly moving at times, funny, experimental yet still coherent. Microserfs captures the difficulties of making human connection in the age of computers while simultaneously depicting the tenderness shared between a group of coding nerds and their families. Favourite characters include Bug, Dan, and Susan, who're all at times absurd but loveable, like friends you meet in University.

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Microserfs: A Novel | Douglas Coupland
post image

This passage is funny and sad at the same time

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Akira: Book one | Katsuhiro ?tomo
Pickpick

This series so far has been everything I need for an August read. High stakes genre fiction in the heat of the summer, with detailed art work and strong characters with the exception of Akria himself who's a wordless blob of ink on the page, but oh well.

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Microserfs: A Novel | Douglas Coupland
post image

It's my day off and I refuse to do anything but sit in this cafe and finish these books 📚#canlit #reread #theenglishpatient #ondaatje #coupland #queerlit

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Beautiful Losers | Leonard Cohen
post image
Pickpick

An okay reading month overall. July 2017 Wrap Up!
Akira, volume 1
Captain Canuck, vol 1
Beautiful Losers, by Leonard Cohen
Lives of Girls and Women, by Alice Munro
The Lonely Hearts Hotel, by Heather O'Neill
Dear Ghost, by Catherine Owen

LeahBergen 🇨🇦 is well-represented. 7y
TheBrockUEnglishMajor @LeahBergen almost always for me =) 7y
6 likes2 comments
blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
The Lovely Bones | Sebold, Alice
post image

Public transit reader spotted. Does anyone else feel a connection with people who read in public. It's like a secret. Unspoken intimacy. #readercam

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image

Books that blend fantasy and realism ❤️❤️❤️❤️✔️✔️✔️✔️

3 likes1 stack add
review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Dear Ghost | Catherine Owen
Pickpick

Excellent collection of poems with vivid imagery and surreal wackiness galore.

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Pickpick

Beautifully written. A coming of age story without any cliché, a totally fresh look on sexual awakening. Love Munro, her complex characters, and her ability to write the extraordinary into even small town Ontario life.

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Dear Ghost | Catherine Owen
post image

Reading at midnight. #poetry #recentrelease

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
The Robber Bride | Margaret Atwood
post image

My all Canadian TBR for the month of July! Celebrating Canada's 150th birthday with literature. #canlit #Canadainliterature #margaretatwood #alicemunro #leonardcohen #douglascoupland #rohintonmistry #mgvassanji #summerbooks #summereads #tbr #julytbr

LeahBergen Fantastic! 7y
6 likes1 comment
blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image

Canada Day Reads! Keep an eye out for my month of Canada tbr to celebrate the (controversial) 150th birthday of Oh Canada ❤️🇨🇦#Canada #Canadianauthors #july1st #wine #adultliterature #shortstorycollection #alicemunro #nobelprizewinners

LeahBergen Oh, good! I'll be following. 🇨🇦 7y
9 likes1 stack add1 comment
review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Captain Canuck Vol. 1: Aleph TP | Kalman Andrasofszky
Mehso-so

Fast paced storytelling but confusing and often blurry art style that made the action scenes suffer immensely.

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
City of Night | John Rechy
post image

Pride Month Reads! June Wrap Up:
Serving In Silence, by Margarethe Cammermeyer. City of Night, By John Rechy. Faggots, by Larry Kramer. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homo-Social Desire, by Eve Sedgwick
.

.

.
#queerfiction #modernclassics #queerclassics #pridemonth #pridereads #lgbtqfiction #memoir

TheBrockUEnglishMajor I also listened to War of the Worlds on audiobook but I forgot to mention that! 7y
2 likes1 comment
blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Captain Canuck Vol. 1: Aleph TP | Kalman Andrasofszky
post image
5 likes1 stack add
blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
City of Night | John Rechy
post image
3 likes3 stack adds
quote
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Faggots | Larry Kramer
post image

"No religion wants us. We're going to have to invent our own" (Kramer 310). Happy #pride everyone. Stay strong and love your gay, bi, trans, intersex, and queer brothers and sisters. #lgbtq #gaybooks #queerclassicliterature #classicliterature #pridemonth #tbr

5 likes1 stack add
review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
War of the Worlds | H G Wells
Mehso-so

This early sci-fi thriller falls into the trap of being a vehicle for espousing philosophical ideas as opposed to developing characters. The novel at one point drops the main character's perspective, and pick's up his brother's perspective for the purpose of the plot, a convention often used in Gothic novels where the cohesiveness of a novel is sacrificed for the sake of the story. Still thrilling overall but nothing masterful.

tpixie Interesting summary thanks 7y
3 likes1 comment
blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
War of the Worlds | H G Wells
post image

Did anyone else know that Spotify has audiobooks?

3 likes1 stack add
review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Life Before Man | Margaret Atwood
post image
Pickpick

First of all, let's talk about this terrible cover . . . But seriously, #MargaretAtwood's fourth novel, Life Before Man, is strangely intriguing. Three Torontonians, Elizabeth, Nate, and Lesje's deal with the death of Elizabeth's lover, Chris. The novel explores the trappings of marriage, motherhood, and gender dynamics in romantic relationships. Overall, great read despite the cast of unlikeable characters.

MyBookLife Haha, that cover 😂😂 7y
MyBookLife God yes!!! 7y
LeahBergen Who sticks the author's FACE on a novel?! 😂 7y
TheBrockUEnglishMajor @LeahBergen idk but I sort of have a thing for terrible book covers 7y
4 likes5 comments
review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
The Wonder | Emma Donoghue
post image
Mehso-so

Overall this was a pretty exciting read. I felt that Lib made some pretty stupid decisions throughout however, the ending was a bit too neat, and the prose wasn't anything wonderful (see what I did there). However the mystery around Anna, a girl who decides to begin fasting after her eleventh birthday, kept me turning the pages.

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
The Stand | Stephen King
This post contains spoilers
show me
post image
Panpan

King is hit or miss with me. The problems I had with this volume; cliché battle between good and evil, the rambling length of the book, the moments of reflection that did not seem profound or necessary to me at all. The ending was slightly unbelievable for me. This community had just been through a huge trail, and then they decide to split at the end? Why? Cause there are too many people?Given the context this is senseless given the context.

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Mad Hope | Heather Birrell
post image
Pickpick

@Liberty #READATHONSTORIES
Heather Birrell's Mad Hope is a beautiful collection of stories that deals with complex issues of coming of age, abortion, life and death, pregnancy and other important topics. The motif of frogs runs throughout the work, suggesting human metamorphosis through trial to be the central theme of the collection. I include #ThomasGlave's #TheTorturer'sWife too because I love it.

9 likes2 stack adds
review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
post image
Pickpick

I read Even This Page Is White not long after reading #Citizen by #ClaudiaRankine. These two books are perfect to pair with each other, as they both participate in the larger conversation of the psychological trauma of racism in Canada and the United States. Shraya's verses, like Rankine's, are accessible yet experimental in form and style. ETPIW also experiments with multi media poetry in exciting ways. Overall, one of the best reads of 2016.

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
The Wonder | Emma Donoghue
post image

A Queer TBR
When I was in high school, the stories of all of the lovers in the cannon, began to stale. If I could have emotive reactions to these stories of heterosexual loves, where were the stories of Queer love that did the same? Eventually, love became less of an importance, but queer economy, queer existing, queer writing became the narratives I craved. Here's a stack I would recommend for anyone who feels the same.

Bibliogeekery Great stack of #queerbooks 📚❤️! 7y
6 likes1 stack add1 comment
blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
The Stand | Stephen King
post image

Audiobooks are helping me get through the end of this semester! Also, reliving my high school Stephen King phase.

4 likes1 stack add
review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Saga, Volume 6 | Brian K Vaughan
post image
Pickpick

Far better than the last two volumes. Also, does anyone else read graphic novels when they feel like they're falling behind on their reading goals? Cause that's where I'm at at the moment 🙃😊🙈Also the romance relationship between the two journalists is nice 👬

blurb
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Wuthering Heights | Emily Bront
post image

A flaming day in while a snow storm turns the world white outside.

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
Vathek | William Beckford
Panpan

Terribly clustered with imagery and digressive plot patterns. I have no idea how I'm going to write an essay on this book.

review
TheBrockUEnglishMajor
The Bad Beginning | Lemony Snicket
post image
Pickpick

A great reread! And as always, can relate to Klaus on a spiritual level.