Happy Wednesday everyone! Wednesdays mean WWW Wednesday updates. 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?

Wow. May is nearly done. Time is flying fast. In three days, we will be welcoming the sixth month of the year. Woah. If only time can slow down. There are still many things I want to do. Nevertheless, I hope that we can achieve all our goals this year. I hope that the rest of the year will be showering us with good news and blessings. Reading-wise, I hope I get to achieve more this year; the previous two years have been record-breaking. This May, I turned my focus to works written by European writers, particularly on the works of Nobel Laureates in Literature. However, I have exhausted the books I can read – I enjoyed this journey – so now I am turning my attention to other European writers. Currently, I am reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.

It has been a while since I read my first novel by Smith; I was not a fan of On Beauty which I read back in 2019. Despite this unsavory first encounter, I was willing to give her oeuvre a chance; her works are familiar presences in must-read lists. I just recently learned that White Teeth was Smith’s debut novel. The heart of the novel is the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones and their families. They became friends when they fought during the Second World War. In a way, White Teeth shares similarities with On Beauty. However, I liked the former better. I don’t know. There is just something about White Teeth that is reeling me in. It covers a lot of seminal subjects such as racism, the patriarchy, and even feminism. I guess it is also because of the writing and the interesting characters that are keeping me tuned in. I can’t wait to see how the story pans out.

What have you finished reading?

After two jam-packed weeks, the past week was rather slow. I was able to complete just one book. José Saramago’s The Cave concluded my foray into the works of European Nobel Laureates in Literature. I was actually planning to read a different Saramago novel, Blindness because of the positive feedback I read about it. Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain a copy of the book so I settled with the only other Saramago book I have on hand. The Cave is my third novel by Saramago, after The Double and Raised From the Ground.

Originally published in 2000 in Portuguese as A caverna, The Cave is the first novel Saramago published after he was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. At the heart of the novel is the trio of Cipriano Algor, his daughter Marta, and his son-in-law Marçal. Already in his mid-sixties, Cipriano is a professional but freelance potter living in the Portuguese countryside; he was assisted by his daughter. Cipriano is selling his produce to the Center which is literally the center of commerce. Meanwhile, his son-in-law is a security guard working for the Center. The Center, a large complex in an anonymous city, is a powerful force in the story as it decides which products will sell and which will not. It can unilaterally cancel any order. The crux of the story was when the Center unilaterally decided to stop buying the ceramics Cipriano produced. As if a twist of fate, Marçal was about to earn a promotion as a residential guard which can grant him a flat at the center. This means that Cipriano must move to the city and leave his countryside home and profession. In a way, the novel was a scathing commentary about capitalism. The Cave was another compelling read from Saramago.

What will you read next?