Reading Reflection #1

Book: The History of Love
Author: Nicole Krauss
Pages Read: 3-34

The first question that arose in my mind as soon as I started reading the novel is “Why is Leo Gursky so obsessed with his death?” This old man seems to only focus on the moment he’s going to lose his life, making sure that he is prepared for any possible situation that may occur. What surprised me is the fact that he doesn’t appear to show even the slightest bit of fear towards the subject. I personally have so many concerns and questions about the afterlife, and am not even near being ready to have them answered so I am having difficulty understanding how Leo could be so careless.

 Something that I found a little unsettling is the fact that Leo tries to go out of his way to be seen. “Sometimes when I’m out, I’ll buy a juice even though I’m not thirsty. If the store is crowded I’ll even go so far as dropping my change all over the floor…” (p. 3) The idea of that alone doesn’t seem very severe, until combined with the fact that Leo lives an extremely lonely life. A tone of sympathy is definitely used towards Leo and is rather successful, making me feel sorry for the poor man.

As the story progresses it is mentioned that Leo is a writer and the reader learns quite a bit of his history. Most of the things he does in his day-to-day life, Leo connects to his past and/or his interest in writing. Since there is an obvious emphasis on these topics, I can conclude that they are rather significant and predict that a large portion of the story is going to develop around them.

**This was my first reading period of the course and I found that it zipped right by due to the fact that I was very into my novel. This led to the use of only a few post it notes since I simply wanted to continue reading with no interruptions. Despite this, I do believe that the post it notes have a lot of potential to be useful, especially when it comes to remembering key thoughts and ideas. I find that writing things down helps my memory in general, and it’ll be very convenient once I do get into the habit of using them.