Really, how time flies. It feels like it was just last week when I made my first WWW Wednesday update for July. Just like that, we’re already on the last Wednesday of my birth month. Along with it is my last WWW Wednesday update for July.

WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme 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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The 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner is my current read. The Road is my first venture into the works of American author Cormac McCarthy. He is a prolific contemporary writer; I’ve encountered his name and his works countless times in several must-read lists. What way to start this adventure than with his highly acclaimed dystopian work. The Road is the story of a father and son who are set on a destination (I am not quite sure where). It has a very quick pace and before I knew it, I am already halfway through the book. The atmosphere reminds me of Patrick Ness’ The Knife of Never Letting Go, one of the rare young adult pieces I love.

What have you finished reading?

For the past week, I managed to complete two more novels. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea are literary classics that are both part of the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and my personal 2020 Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge (of which The Road is also a part of).

Let’s start off with the first book I’ve finished, Northanger Abbey. Although this book was published posthumously, it is widely regarded as Jane Austen’s first major work. It is the story of the young and naive Catherine Morland and her first venture into love and romance. As most readers would recognize, this plot is classic Austen. But interwoven into the text are vestiges of satire and a bit of the picaresque. What else is there to say? Austen is a guarantee for an engaging read.

From one female character and female writer to another. Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is widely regarded as the best of her literary ensemble. Inspired by another English literary classic, Jane Eyre, Rhys set out on retelling the story of the first Mrs. Rochester who was referred to, in Jane Eyre, as mad. The first Mrs. Rochester is Antoinette Cosway, a Creole heiress. Wide Sargasso Sea is rather a quick read but packs a lot of punch with the profound subjects it touched on.

What will you read next?

First off, I am not really sure where to start in terms of my August reading journey. I want to start with Charles Dickens’ Bleak House because it is the last book in my 2020 Beat the Backlist Reading Challenge. I am a little apprehensive, however, because of its length and it’s been nearly a decade since I last read a Dickens. My second option is to read Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel, her latest work which forms part of my 2020 Top 10 Books I Look Forward to. My copy of the book just got delivered today and I can’t wait to read it because it is going to be my first St. John Mandel. I just placed Peter Nadas’ Parallel Stories because I want to resume my 2020 Top 20 Reading List challenge.

The eighth month of the year is just knocking around the corner. I hope everyone is going to have a great August ahead. For Filipinos like me, this means that there is only one month more before the commencement of the 2020 Christmas Season. I can certainly hear the Christmas songs ringing somewhere. Haha. For the uninitiated, we Filipinos start our Christmas season as early as September, the first “ber” month. Despite the challenges of the year, I hope everyone is going to have a blast in the next five months. Fighting!

And thus concludes another WWW Wednesday update! I hope everyone is having a great midweek! Do keep safe and as always, enjoy reading!