Happy Wednesday everyone! Woah. Today is the second to the last Wednesday of February. After a slow January, February is zooming past us. I hope that the first two months of the year have been kind to everyone. I also hope that the rest of the year will usher in more blessings and good news for everyone. I hope everyone will be 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?

I am still in the midst of a reading catch-up with books published in the current decade. After a couple of books originally published in English, I am now reading my first translated novel for the year, Hwang Bo-Reum’s Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop. The book, I have learned, was a runaway sensation in South Korea, hence, the hype that surrounded the book last year when it was released for anglophone readers. Although the book was not originally part of my reading list, it didn’t take much before I added the book to my own reading list. I guess this is a continuation of books about books I have been reading in the past few years such as Sara Nisha Adams’ The Reading List, Sōsuke Natsukawa’s The Cat Who Saved Books, and Satoshi Yagisawa’s Days at the Morisaki Bookshop.

The founder of the titular Hyunam-Dong Bookshop was Yeongju who dreamed about opening her own bookshop, At the point when she opened the bookshop, she was coming out of a professional and personal burnout; she tried to pursue a life set by society. Running a bookshop, however, also had its own complications, as Yeongju was about to find out. Customers ask for recommendations. The bookshop cannot earn by just selling books. Yeongju must find ways to promote the bookshop. Assisting her was Minjun, a newly hired barista and a university student; and Jimi, her closest friend. The book is quite straightforward as it underlines the understated pleasures of books, reading, and bookshops. The book also underlines some of the pressures prevalent in Korean society. I am halfway through the book and I can’t wait to see how it all pans out.

What have you finished reading?

After a couple of slow weeks, I have romped up my reading momentum in the past week. I was able to complete three books, the first of which was Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s When We Were Birds. It was, I believe, in 2022 when I first encountered the book. The title has an interesting sound to it which immediately piqued my interest; the book’s cover also looked interesting. Well, my book selection process can be shallow at times. Anyway, I obtained a copy of the book and made it part of my reading catch-up.

Set in Banwo’s native Trinidad and Tobago – this makes her just the second Trinidadian writer, after Sir V.S. Naipaul, whose oeuvre I dipped into – When We Were Birds charted the story of two main characters. The first one was Yejide St Bernard who had the misfortune, or perhaps not, of being born into a family with a long line of women destined to commune with the dead. She reluctantly took on this role on the eve of her mother Petronella’s death; they have not had an ideal mother-daughter relationship. Enter Emmanuel Darwin. He moved to the fictional city of Port Angeles, a place that “could swallow a man whole” his mother cautioned him, from the countryside to earn money to buy medicine for his ailing mother. However, the only job he was able to find was at Fidelis, a vast cemetery. He kept it a secret from his mother because their Rastafari faith disallows them from coming into contact with the dead. It was at Fidelis where Yejide and Emmanuel crossed paths under unusual circumstances. Overall, When We Were Birds is a compelling ghost story, love story, and mystery.

From Trinidad and Tobago, my reading journey took me to a bleak future. Another 2022 novel, Thrust is Lidia Yuknavitch’s fourth novel although it is my first by the American writer; she has Lithuanian heritage, hence, the last name. I was initially reluctant to purchase a copy of the book although it was being recommended by fellow book bloggers upon its release. However, it was only toward the end of the year that I relented after the book was listed by several literary pundits and publications as one of the best reads of the year. I guess it is that easy to convince me to read a book. HAHA.

At the heart of the story was Laisvė, which, in Lithuanian, means freedom. She was born in the latter part of the 21st century; the story commenced in 2085. When she was younger, she lost her brother and mother. This left her in the care of her grieving father, Aster. Together, they lived in The Brook, a remnant of what was once the bustling Big Apple. The Brook was surrounded by big walls to protect it from the rising sea waters. As one can surmise, climate change has drastically altered the landscape of the world. Meanwhile, Laisvė was no ordinary child. She was born possessing the special ability of being able to travel by water across time. Across time, she ferried unusual objects of great significance and delivered them to their rightful owners. The ultimate goal was to alter the course of their personal history. Her mission made her cross paths with celebrated artists, accused murderers, and even the children of dictators. As the story toggles between the future and the past, we read about a society that is on the brink of collapse. I guess Thrust is a continuation of my foray into dystopian literature which started with Stephen Markley’s The Deluge. Both books are thought-provoking with urgent messages.

My three-book romp concluded with a familiar name; all other writers in this update are new to me. It was during the pandemic that I learned about Mexican writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Her novels were everywhere and it all started with Gods of Jade and Shadow, a book I liked because of its mythological elements; I always thought that this was her debut novel but apparently not as it was already her fourth. Her writing rampage during the pandemic continued with Mexican Gothic which got comparisons with Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. I wasn’t really planning on reading more of her works but Velvet Was the Night was recommended by former US President Barack Obama.

Velvet Was the Night shares some elements with Gods of Jade and Shadow as they are both works of historical fiction. What I like about each of the three books by Moreno-Garcia is that they are distinct from each other. Velvet Was the Night was a more straightforward narrative, and devoid of the fantasy that the other two books I read had. Set in early 1970s Mexico City, the novel introduces Maite, a secretary working at a law firm. Outside of the offices, students were protesting as chaos was gripping the country: individuals were disappeared by the government and political mayhem has plagued the capital city. Meanwhile, Elvis was a young man working as a criminal for hire under El Mago. He was assigned to tail Leonora, a young woman who recently became a neighbor of Maite. All these strands were carefully woven together by Moreno-Garcia to depict a pivotal period in modern Mexico’s history. Velvet Was the Night was another interesting read from Garcia-Moreno, a testament to her versatility as a storyteller.

What will you read next?