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?

Just like that, we are already in the sixth month of the year. Time is flying fast. Today is also the first Wednesday of June. If only time would slow down because there are many things I still want to accomplish this year. But with seven months still to go, we have more than ample time to achieve our goals this year. Further, 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 June, I will be focusing on the works of European writers. I started this journey last May when I read the works of Nobel Laureates in Literature. For now, I am pivoting to the works of other European writers. My current read is Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Devils.

Honestly, it was a different Dostoevsky novel I was planning to read; Poor People is part of my 2024 Beat the Backlist Challenge. However, when I encountered Devils on one of my forays into the bookstore. I can’t wait to read the book so I read it ahead of Poor People. Devils is my third novel by Dostoevsky although it is my first since 2018. Because of the underlying themes it tackled, the book reminded me of Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. It also introduces a vast cast of characters such as Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky, Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina, and Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch Stavrogin. Their stories converged in the Russian countryside. The novel is rather complex and it deals with a plethora of subjects. One of the most prevalent subject was the dangers of radicalism, particularly of nihilism. Social injustice and inequities were also underlined in the story. I can’t wait to see how the story pans out.

What have you finished reading?

Like Dostoevsky, it was actually through must-read lists that I first encountered British award-winning writer Zadie Smith. Some of her works were staples in said lists. This led me to read On Beauty. Honestly, I wasn’t a fan of the book. I guess it was a little too intellectual in its approach to storytelling. Nevertheless, this did not stop me from seeking her other works. Five years after my first Smith novel, I have finally read my second. I wasn’t actually aware that White Teeth was Smith’s debut novel which she published at the turn of the millennium.

The focus of the novel is two friends: the Bangladeshi Samad Miah Iqbal and the Englishman Archibald “Archie” Jones. The two men first met when they served the British Army tank battalion during the Second World War. When the story started, it was the New Year’s Day 1975. 47-year-old Archie attempted to take his own life after his Italian wife walked out on him. But his attempt was disrupted by a halal butcher. This altered his life as it led him to a New Year’s Eve party where he met Clara Bowden. The story then slowly crawled into the future, introducing the two characters’ families and their individual stories; their families are intertwined. In a way, White Teeth shares similarities with On Beauty. Both charted the fortunes of two families and their unlikely fates have intertwined. Both also had a very intellectual approach to storytelling. Despite this, I liked White Teeth better. There is just something about White Teeth that reeled me in. It covers a lot of seminal subjects such as racism, the patriarchy, and even feminism. The motley crew of interesting characters also kept me tuned in. Overall, White Teeth is a satisfying read.

What will you read next?