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?

Happy first Wednesday of my birth month! Time does fly fast. Yesterday was the midpoint day of the year (183rd day). We have literally entered the second half of the year. Anyway, I hope that the year is going well for everyone. Reading-wise, July will be the third consecutive month I am staying in the vast ambit of European literature. I, without design, listed several works of European writers in my reading challenges. There are also other books, not part of this list, that I wanted to read. Among these books is Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park which I obtained during the recently concluded Big Bad Wolf Sale.

Mansfield Park is the fifth novel by the highly-esteemed English writer I read; it was the third she published. However, it is the first since 2021 when I read Northanger Abbey. In a way, the story is quite similar to Northanger Abbey. The titular Mansfield Park is the estate owned by Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram. The story revolves around Fanny, Lady Bertram’s young niece .Born into a poor family with several siblings, Fanny went to live with her aunt. In Mansfield Park, Fanny grew up along her cousins Tom, Edmund, Maria, and Julia. I am nearly midway through the book but I can surmise that the book is about Fanny’s observations of the lives of the Bertrams, in the same breadth as Austen’s earlier works. I can’t wait to see how the story pans out.

What have you finished reading?

My foray into European literature made me explore further parts of the continent I am not that familiar with such as Norwegian literature. So far, this year, I have read three novels by Norwegian writers, the most I read in a year. I think this total already surpasses the total of books written by Norwegian writers I read before this year.. The third of this novels I read this year is Vigdis Hjorth’s Is Mother Dead. I first came across the book through the International Booker Prize for which the book was longlisted for in 2023. In a way, the book is a breather because my foray into European literature has been dominated by male writers.

At the heart of Is Mother Dead is Johanna. She was back in Oslo, Norway after years of being away. She is now a successful artist but her return to her homeland aroused several emotions. Back when she was younger, she was pursuing a degree in law and was married to Thorleif, a fellow lawyer. However, she abandoned all of these and, by extension, her family to live with an American artist named Mark. Her abrupt actions caught her parents by surprise. They immediately cut all communication channels with their daughter. Now in her fifties, she yearned to reconnect with the family she left behind; her father has already passed away but her estranged mother was still alive and was looked after by her sister. As a young woman, Johanna has always wanted to forge her own path, one that is independent from the one envisioned and designed by her parents. Back in Oslo, Johanna obsesses about her mother, leaving her phone calls, and even stalking her on her daily tasks. Overall, Is Mother Dead is a propulsive story about the rifts that exist between parents and children, easily one of my favorite reads this year.

From Scandinavia, my literary journey next took me to France, to a familiar name. Alexandre Dumas is one of the most beloved French writers. Even our Philippine National Hero Dr. Jose Rizal has Dumas‘ The Count of Monte Cristo among his favorite reads. In fact, this is the reason why I read the book way back when I was still in university. I can understand why Dr. Rizal was inspired by the book which is also one of my favorite all time reads. However, it has been some time since I read a book by Dumas. I previously started reading a different translation of The Three Musketeers but I had difficulty grasping it so I had to put it on hold. A couple of years later, I obtained a different translation of the book which I eventually included in my 2024 Top 24 Reading List.

Originally published in French in 1844 as Les Trois Mousquetaires, The Three Musketeers is, without a doubt, one of the most revered literary titles out there. Set in early 1600s during the reign of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, the novel charted the madcap adventures of four swashbuckling heroes. The first of these four is D’Artagnan, a Gascon who traveled from the French countryside to Paris to join the Musketeers of the Guard. He carried with him a letter of introduction to Monsieur de Tréville, the commander of the Musketeers, a King’s elite regiment. However, an encounter with an older man left D’Artagnan beaten unconscious and his letter stolen. This did not stop D’Artagnan from pursuing his original goal. He also resolved to avenge himself against the older man. But first, he must fulfill his goal of becoming a Musketeer. He managed to get introduced to M. de Tréville who gave him a lukewarm reception and shortly after, he got embroiled in a duel with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. But who would have thought that from this unlikely situation bloomed a strong bond? The Three Musketeers, as expected, did not disappoint and is easily one of my all time favorite reads.

What will you read next?