Nadya Sugiarto LMST345

WITCHES For this week, I read “Akata Witch”. I think it’s really interesting. It’s my first time reading a novel that brings an African culture and package it with the fun adventurous magical experience. “Akata Witch” does follow the formula of typical Young Adult novel, though. For me personally, the same formula kind of tires me a bit, but it is still a fun read. It is so similar to Harry Potter. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I’m a fan of Harry Potter and I appreciate the elements of Harry Potter in Akata Witch, but I guess I wish it can be more different than that. The Leopard and The Lamb concept is basically the Witch and Muggle system. The fact the Sunny is an unwanted child in the house is so much like Harry in Dursley’s family. The knife and the wand. The Leopard Knocks and the Diagon Alley… and of course the magic school. Oh, and soccer and Quidditch too. I do like the issue that the novel brought. The belief in some societies that son i...

Week 4: The New Weird For this topic, I read "A Souvenir from Japan", "The Neglected Garden", and “The Snow Child”. Like the title, they are pretty weird stories. I started with "A Souvenir from Japan" and I didn't really understand it. That's why I tried something else and I read " The Neglected Garden". I still didn't quite get it, but maybe a bit better compared to "A Souvenir from Japan". “The Snow Child” feels like a more metaphoric version of the Snow White story. "A Souvenir from Japan" seems to be a story about a Caucasian lady that lives in Japan and feels like an alien? A lot of the descriptions are observations. Even during the intimate moment in the hotel, it feels more like an observation too. She talked about the legend of Momotaro as something really alien for her, not just foreign. It feels kind of weird for me. Maybe because Momotaro is one of the folktales I grew up with ...

18 Feb 2019 I'm just catching up... For Asian Horror reading, I read Kwaidan. I think it’s really interesting that it doesn’t feel like the horror story I expected. It feels more like folktales with moral message, and specifically has ghosts or spirits in the story… or sometimes just death. Reading Kwaidan brings me back to childhood memories when I spent a lot of times reading folktales, either local or from other countries. I remember when I was in elementary school, I was always excited to get my Indonesian text books every beginning of the semester. I would go through all the pages and looked for any folktales reading I could find. Also the times when I would go the school library with my friend after class and read different folktales. I don’t know how I would feel if the younger me read Kwaidan. I wonder if I would feel scared? I want to say that I wouldn’t because it doesn’t feel scary at all now. Maybe as a kid, the weird moments like when the s...