Happy midweek everyone! How has the year been going for you so far? I hope that the year has been kind to everyone. If not, I hope you will experience a reversal of fortune in the remaining weeks of the year. More importantly, I hope everyone is happy and healthy, in body, mind, and spirit.

With the midweek comes a fresh WWW Wednesday update, my first this year. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme hosted originally by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. The mechanics for WWW Wednesday are 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?

It has been nearly a week since the last month of the year started. Woah. Time does fly past. I hope I get to achieve all the goals I set at the start of the year; I wish the same for everyone. Reading-wise, I set quite a lot of goals. One of my goals this year is to read at least sixty backlist books. Considering the type of reader I am, it didn’t take me long to complete my target. However, I have also listed twenty backlist books I resolved to read this year no matter what. It was this part of the challenge that I struggled a bit. Nevertheless, I can now breathe a sigh of relief because I am about to read the last book in this challenge, Nobel Laureate in Literature Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. This is also the 21st book I read that is part of the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die; my goal this year was to read 20 books from this list. I am yet to start reading the book so I don’t have much of an impression of the book. I will share my impressions in this week’s First Friday Impression update.

What have you finished reading?

I ended my November reading journey with another book that is part of my 2023 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. It first caught my attention because of the word “daughter” in the book’s title. It was also around this time that I noted some books having daughter or son in their title such as Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son and Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Honestly, I was reluctant to purchase The Memory Keeper’s Daughter at first but I eventually relented, curious about what it has in store. Unfortunately, it was left to gather dust on my bookshelf for years, hence, its inclusion in my 2023 Beat the Backlist Challenge.

The novel commences with a mother, Norah Henry, giving birth. Her delivery was performed by her doctor-cum-husband, Dr. David Henry. Norah delivered a perfectly healthy boy whom they named Paul. What David did not expect was the birth of a second child just a couple of minutes after Paul’s delivery. The second baby was a girl who was born with a defect. She had Down’s Syndrome which means that her future would be brimming with difficulties, a high possibility of heart defect, and even early death. Recognizing the pain his daughter might inflict, David asked his nursing assistant, Caroline Gill to take his daughter to an institution catering to patients with Down’s Syndrome. Against his wishes and because of the conditions of the institution, Caroline took the child into her own fold, naming her Phoebe. What ensued was a story exploring the complexities and dynamics of families. The novel never quite peaked, even leaving Phoebe as an afterthought. It had so much potential but it never quite reached it

Like Song of Solomon, Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride is one of the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. It was the 20th book from the aforementioned list I read this year. Interestingly, it was my 120th read this year. However, unlike the first two books in this weekly update, The Robber Bride is not a part of my 2023 Beat the Backlist Challenge. Nevertheless, it was part of a different reading challenge: my 2023 Top 23 Reading List. It is also the fifth book by the highly heralded Canadian writer – a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature – that I read but my first since her Booker Prize-winning novel, The Testaments.

Originally published in 1993, The Robber Bride charted the story of four women. Tony, Charis, and Roz were close friends who first met during their college years. When the story opened, the three women were holding their monthly meet-up at a fashionable restaurant in Toronto called The Toxique. Apart from being college friends, they were bonded by another reason: their tumultuous relationship with the fourth woman, Zenia. Zenia has been dead for five years but the story took a different turn when Zenia, very much alive, crashed their luncheon. Surprised was an understatement. The story then takes the readers further to when the four women were still college students. Each of the three friends was enamored by Zenia. Meanwhile, Zenia gave each of the three friends different versions of her life. This is an interesting concept as Atwood kept the three women, and consequently, the readers guessing as to which is the truth. Things came to a head when Zenia stole the boyfriends of her friends. The novel highlights the dynamics of male and female relationships. The novel was also a deep rumination on the nature of female companionship and, by extension, feminism. Margaret Atwood, as always, does not fail to deliver.

What will you read next?