Week 10: Cultures and Ideas Finale!

    Throughout this course, the most unexpected and surprising thing has to be the book Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. It probably stands as the most unconventional and difficult book I’ve read– not in a thematic sense, but in terms of pure rhetoric and text. The section before the actual story started especially confused me. It often felt like I was in Spanish class again, as I had to read slowly and didn’t always understand what was being written. It definitely wasn’t the kind of book you could skim.

    Another thing that surprised me was how invested I got into certain books, especially There There. It’s not often that I lose track of how many pages I’ve read, and it genuinely felt like time just flew by almost every time I sat down to read it. It’s a book I could see being adapted into a mini-series and being done well. Some of the most interesting parts were the class debates, which were always fresh and interesting, sometimes even getting heated. I’d also like to give an honorable mention to the library Archives and Special Collections visits, as it was really cool to see all these old texts and the many different formats/material they used.

    Overall, this was a very fascinating, fun, and fulfilling class that showed us a huge diversity of texts around the world, and I am glad to have taken it for these 20 weeks. I also want to thank Michelle for teaching us for two whole quarters and doing such a great job. Thank you!

Comments

  1. HeatherLMarch 19, 2023 at 2:35 PM

    Hey Andrew! I completely forgot about Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, and I agree - I have never read a book like that. It makes me appreciate how timeless philosophic musings are and how people from very different parts of the world and time periods still wonder about their role in the universe, where humans came from, etc. Finishing that text was almost like a literature rite of passage in a way - I know that since I got through that, I have a much better chance at analyzing complex texts in the future.

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  2. Eloise DanielloMarch 19, 2023 at 4:52 PM

    Hi Andrew! I totally agree with you that Hayy Ibn Yaqzan was the most unique book I've ever read. It was difficult to understand and took up all of my attention. I also felt similarly to how you felt with There There, when I read Pachinko. I found myself enthralled in the story and was excited to learn more. This is a feeling I don't usually feel when reading required school books, so I was happy that I actually found personal enjoyment in some of them.

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  3. John SawyerMarch 20, 2023 at 5:16 PM

    Hey Andrew, I also found Hayy Ibn Yaqzan to be a very difficult read. Without the microlectures, I am sure I would have been lost throughout most of the reading. However, I do not think any amount of explanation could have prepared me for the first ten pages. It was the most disorienting introduction to a book that I have ever read. Honestly, like you, it made me like the book even more. No longer was it just a story to read, it was a challenge to overcome and understand what the author is presenting.

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