Let’s make the first Wednesday of the last month of 2020 count! As it is midweek,it is also time for another WWW Wednesday update! WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme 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?
www-wednesdays
What are you currently reading?

Hungarian writer Péter Nádas’ Parallel Stories was one-half of the two books I was currently reading last week. With Piranesi done, I am dedicating all my time to this colossal work (not really as I have a job in the daytime, haha). This 1,000 pager also happens to be my 800th novel and the last piece in my 2020 Top 20 Reading List. Its length is imposing, daunting even, the story even more so. With over 700 pages done, the only thing that made an impression on me is the number of sexual references. Cock, labia, and clitoris are ubiquitous, especially in the first 400-pages. Thankfully, a story is not taking shape and I hope that it would carry on until the 1,100th page.

What have you finished reading?

Speaking of lengthy reads, Susanna Clarke’s Mr. Norrell and Jonathan Strange is one of my longest reads. It took Clarke nearly two decades to follow it up. Thankfully, Piranesi is not as colossal as its predecessor. It is the story of a man who lives in a labyrinthine house in a world outside the realms of reality. He doesn’t know his own name but he was nicknamed Piranesi by the only other person who drops by every now and then in the house. But the truth is always stranger than fiction, as they say. Magical and thought-provoking, it is Clarke rising to the occasion, once again.

What will you read next?

During last week’s WWW Wednesday post, I actually named Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown and Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations as the books I am going to read next. I am changing my answer because I just received my copies of C. Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills is Gold and Isabel Ibanez’s Woven in Moonlight. These two books are part of my 2020 Top 10 Books I Look Forward To. In particular, How Much of These Hills is Gold is a book I have been looking forward to, especially after it got longlisted for the 2020 Man Booker Prize.

This, however, doesn’t mean that I am not going to read Interior Chinatown and Migrations. I’ll try hard to complete as many books as I can this year. Also in line are Maggie O’Farrell’s award-wining Hamnet, David Mitchell’s Utopian Avenue, and T.J. Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea. These are books I just purchased and received recently. I’ll try to squeeze all of the “new” books in before the year ends. Crossing my fingers.

Not once did I consider 2020 shaping up to be a “new” books year, especially for a backlist reader like me. I have read nearly doubled my previous output of new books, and I am still looking forward to reading some 2020 books! Thus concludes another WWW Wednesday update! I hope everyone is having a great midweek! Do keep safe and as always, enjoy reading! 

Advertisement