Happy Wednesday everyone! Wednesdays also 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?

Welcome to the last Wednesday of October. How time flies! In two days, we will be welcoming the eleventh month of the year. Anyway, I hope the year has been great and kind to everyone. I hope everyone was able to or will get to complete all their goals this year. I hope the remainder of the year will shower everyone with blessings and good news. Reading-wise, October turned into a mixed bag. I started the month reading works of Nobel Laureates in Literature then switched to books shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize toward the end of the month. Thankfully, all the books I ordered have arrived. I am now just one book short of completing all six books on the shortlist; interestingly, I have not read any work of any of the six authors on the list. The last book on the shortlist is Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, my current read. I just started reading the book this morning but I can tell that it is perhaps the most unique of the six books because it is set in outer space. But since I just started reading the book, I don’t have much impression to share. Nevertheless, I am looking forward to it.

What have you finished reading?

In my effort to cover as much ground as I can, I was able to complete three books in the past week, the second week in a row I was able to do so. Of the last six books I read, Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is kind of an outlier as it is the only book that is not part of the Booker Prize shortlist; I already read Percival Everett’s James last month. Regardless, Martyr! is a book I was looking forward to. Before this year, I have not come across the Iranian American poet. However, while searching for books to include in my 2024 Top 10 Books I Look Forward To, Martyr! was a familiar presence in several 2024 most anticipated releases lists. It was a no-brainer for me to include it in my own, making it the eighth book from the said list that I have read.

At the heart of Akbar’s debut novel was twenty-nine-year-old Cyrus Shams. When we first met him, he was recovering from his addiction to alcohol and drugs. He has been trying to straighten himself out following a turbulent period in his life. He has always been at odds with life. He was born in Tehran but his mother, Roya, perished shortly after he was born. This prompted his father, Ali, to move them to the United States where Cyrus was raised. When he entered Keady University, his father also died, setting Cyrus’ life into a tailspin. Once he tried cleaning up his acts, he also started a new endeavor: writing a book about martyrs. Cyrus has long been preoccupied with the thoughts of death – he was suicidal and depressive – and martyrdom as a means of defining his injuries. His writing project made him cross paths with dying Iranian artist Orkideh who was spending her dying days as an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum where she talked to visitors about death. Martyr! is a complex story but its structure and its compelling writing make it a riveting read. It was not only Cyrus whose psychological profile was explored; the backstories of his parents and other seminal characters were interspersed in the story, along with passages from Cyrus’ writing project. I liked Martyr! and is easily one of my favorite reads of the year.

After the brief interlude, I resumed my foray into the books shortlisted for the Booker Prize. As I mentioned above, I have never read any of the works of the six authors on the shortlist; in the longlist, it was only Richard Powers with whom I have a background with. On top of this, it was only Everett who I heard of before. All these made me look forward to the remaining five writers in the shortlist. I am already done with Yael van der Wouden (The Safekeep) and Charlotte Wood (Stone Yard Devotional) and I am now reading Anne Michael’s Held. Interestingly, all the four Booker Prize-shortlisted writers I have read so far came from various countries: US (Everett), the Netherland (van der Wouden), Australia (Wood), and Canada (Michaels).

In a way, Held shares a similarity with James and The Safekeep. All three are works of historical fiction. However, Held veers away from conventional storytelling. A family saga that spans 1902 to 2025, the plot weaves in and out of the past, the present, and even the future. This is a facet it shares with Martyr! Michaels’ third novel, the story also transports us to various parts of the world, with most settings taking place in war zones. Because of its episodic structure, one has to wade through the various pieces and characters to fully appreciate the story. The first piece to the trenches of the First World War where John is wounded and cold. Three years later, he was back in North Yorkshire, married to Helena, the first of several women whose voices dominating the story. Helena is an artist who was not confident in her work. A couple of decades later, we meet Helena coping with grief. The couple had a daughter named Anna. Anna is a doctor who married a Marxist hatmaker from Piedmont and is now settled in Suffolk. Their daughter, Mara, is also a doctor. The mother and daughter pair gravitated to serving in warzones. For its complex structure, the various episodes were thematically linked as they explore love, war, art, and even sciences; Marie and Pierre Curie made appearances. Overall, Held is a riveting read

My three-book escapade culminated with Rachel Kushner’s latest novel, Creation Lake. It is the fifth book shortlisted for the Booker Prize I read. With her shortlisting, United States had the most shortlisted writers in 2024; Harvey is the lone British among the six writers. I am not sure where I first met her but Kushner seemed like a familiar name. Regardless, I am looking forward to exploring the oeuvre of a writer whose body of work I had not explored before. Luckily, I was able to obtain copies of the rest of the Booker Prize-shortlisted books without much ado.

In a way, Creation Lake is another interesting addition to the shortlist. While Orbital is set in the outer space, Creation Lake is a spy novel; it is also the thickest of the six books on the shortlist. Kushner’s latest novel is written from the perspective of a female secret agent who we come to know only through her alias Sadie Smith. She previously worked with the FBI but was fired from her job after she was found guilty of entrapment. The thirty-four-year-old has since become a mercenary for shadowy, private entities. Currently, her services were enlisted by a shadowy figure. Her task was to infiltrate a radical farming collective called Le Moulin in Guyenne, a remote region of France. Sadie’s real target, however, was Lucien’s close friend, Pascal Balmy, the leader of Le Moulin. Drawing Sadie’s intrigue was Bruno Lacombe, a philosopher who served as the commune’s intellectual figurehead. Rejecting modernity and taking residence in network of a caves beneath his farm, Bruno advocated for pre-industrial modes of living. His email communications with the Moulinards drew Sadie into the swirl of Bruno’s philosophy. Creation Lake is a complex – all of the books on the shortlist are anything but – but compelling read.

With the diversity of this year’s Booker Prize shortlist, predicting this year’s winner could be quite interesting. Each book has its own strength. Each book is distinct and equally interesting. I can’t wait to see which one is going to take home the bacon.

What will you read next?