Happy midweek everyone! Woah. I can’t believe that today is the last Wednesday of the last month of the year. In a couple of days, we will be welcoming 2024. With the year dwindling down, I hope that the remaining days of the year will be filled with blessings and good news for you and your family. 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?

In ways more than one, 2023 has been a breakthrough year in my reading journey. Over the course of the year, I read my 1,000th and 1,100th novels. This means that I have read over one hundred books for the second year in a row, a feat I did not expect I would ever replicate. Not only did I breach the three-digit mark, but I have also reset my personal record for the most number of books I read in a year. I ended 2023 with 103 books. Currently, I am reading my 130th book this year, Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting. It is a book I have been looking forward to even though I have never heard of before 2023.

It was midway through the year when I first came across the Irish writer. His latest novel, his first in nearly a decade, was receiving wide acclaim. Literary publications have been singing praises for The Bee Sting. It was more than enough to pique my interest. My curiosity about the book grew further when it was longlisted for the Booker Prize; Murray was previously longlisted in 2010. The book would end up on the shortlist but lost to Murray’s countryman, Paul Lynch, and his novel Prophet Song. This did not hamper my spirit and luckily, I was able to obtain a copy of The Bee Sting, along with two other shortlisted works. I just started reading the book so I can’t share much this time but I will be sharing my impressions in this week’s First Impression Friday update.

What have you finished reading?

In a way, the final stretch of the year was a catchup for 2023 releases that I have yet to read. One of these books is Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful. Like Murray, I have not heard of Napolitano before 2023. However, her latest novel, Hello Beautiful was a familiar presence in most anticipated 2023 book releases lists. With my curiosity piqued, I added the book to my own 2023 Top 10 Books I Look Forward To List; this is a reading challenge that I always fail at and 2023 is not going to be any different. However, this is not stopping me from reading the new releases I already have.

Hello Beautiful is inspired by Louisa Mae Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women. The book was directly referenced in the story and even the four sisters at the heart of the novel take inspiration from the March sisters. Julia is the oldest of the Padavano sisters born to a middle-class family during the second half of the 20th century. Julia was feisty, ambitious, and a go-getter, cast in the same mold as their mother. Sylvie, on the other hand, loved books and was dreamy. Sylvie was reminiscent of Jo March. Twins Cecelia and Emeline are like two peas in a pod. Despite the glaring dichotomies in their personalities, the four sisters got along very well. That was until William entered their lives. A series of unfortunate events ensued; these are events that would test the bond of the sisters. There are a lot of dimensions to the story that I appreciated, sisterly love being one of them. While some characters can be frustrating, I did warm up to the Padavano sisters and their individual plights and also their tribulations. Hello Beautiful is a heartwarming but also achingly heart-wrenching family story.

From one family to another family. Ann Patchett first caught my attention with her fourth novel, Bel Canto which was prevalent in several must-read lists. I read the book back in 2017 but I was not totally impressed. This, however, did not stop me from wanting to explore her oeuvre. However, when I learned that she released a new work this year, I wasn’t really that interested. I eventually conceded and gave Tom Lake a chance when I kept encountering positive reviews of the book. It was even cited as one of the best books of the year. I get it: I have to read Tom Lake to know what the hype was about.

Tom Lake joins a growing list of pandemic novels. The novel is set in 2020, the early year of the pandemic. Lara Nelson and her husband Joe were running an orchard in northern Michigan. With lockdowns limiting the movements of the populace, they cannot hire pickers for the cherry season. This prompted them to call their three daughters – Emily, Maisie, and Nell – home to help them. To bide the time, Lara told her daughters stories of her youth, in particular, the time she was part of a summer theater troupe based in the town of Tom Lake in the 1980s. Lara was hired to play Emily in the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder. In Tom Lake, she met Peter Duke, who plays Emily’s father; he was twenty-eight years old. The two fell in love, taking part in a whirlwind summer romance but it prematurely ended due to unforeseen circumstances. Like The Dutch House, there was an uncanny touch of fairy tale to the story. It was idyllic and heartwarming. It was about youthful love as much as it was about connections. Patchett again proved her mastery of capturing the dynamics of closed groups.

What will you read next?