Whew – time be flying that fast. It’s already midweek, which means one thing, a WWW Wednesday update! Before I get carried away and start talking about anything under the sun, let’s go back to this fun bookish meme, which was originally hosted by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. The mechanics for WWW Wednesday is quite simple. You just have to answer three questions:

  1. What are you currently reading?
  2. What have you finished reading?
  3. What will you read next?

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What are you currently reading?

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I bought Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind three years ago but, unfortunately, I never got around to reading it until this year. I think one of the reasons I parked the book is because it is part of a series but with so many recommendations from fellow avid readers, I cannot keep myself from the tenterhook and the excitement. I even included the book in my 2020 Top 20 Reading List. I already finished about a hundred pages and I can say that I am loving being part of Daniel’s adventures so far. Moreover, the novel is about books which makes it even more appealing.

What have you finished reading? 

Rudyard Kipling’s Kim was my opener for my March reading journey. It relates the story of, well, Kimball (or Kim) O’Hara, the orphaned son of an Irish couple. Left to fend for himself, he was living an itinerant life in 19th century British India. Practically a beggar in the streets of Lahore, his life changed after meeting and befriending Teshoo Lama, who was on a spiritual journey. Kim was rather a complicated read. But I guess this is more due to the archaic language rather than the story itself.

Kim was supposed to be the opening number for what is supposed to be a March English Literature Month. But I guess not everything goes to plan for my next journey brought me to 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Olga Tokarczuk’s native Poland with her Man Booker International Prize-winning work, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. It does sound very macabre and ominous. Well, it was! The book careened towards astrology which gave it a very different complexion, a totally eccentric reading experience which reminded me of yet another Man Booker International Prize winner, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian.

What will you read next? 

With my reading month up in the air, I guess I’ll just simply pursue a European reading month instead of an English literature month. With that said, I’m projecting my next read to be the controversial 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature Peter Handke’s Slow Homecoming. From Austria, I’ll head over to Sweden with Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove. 

Unlike Handke whose name I just heard of after the announcement of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature winners, Backman is a name I kept encountering in bookstores. Despite numerous recommendations for A Man Called Ove, nothing convinced me to pick the book up. That was until I saw NCT 127’s (yep, a KPop group) Johnny brought out a copy  of the book from his backpack. The rest, they say, is history.

 

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