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?

How time flies! November is about to draw to a close. In a couple of days, we will be welcoming the last month of the year. Before we know it, we will be welcoming 2025. Time takes its natural course and, unfortunately, we can neither stop nor reverse it. As the year draws to a close, I hope that the year has been kind to everyone. I hope everyone has completed their goals or is on track to achieving them. I hope that everyone gets repaid for their hard work. I hope the remainder of the year will shower everyone with blessings and good news. As I approach the final stretch of the year, my focus, reading-wise, has shifted to the remaining books in my reading challenges. This is actually a trend, considering how I have always scrambled toward the end of the year to catch up on my active reading challenges. Thankfully, I have completed all the books on my 2024 Top 24 Reading List. My focus is now on my 2024 Beat the Backlist Challenge.

One of the twenty books I listed on my 2024 Beat the Backlist Challenge is David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. It was either in 2016 or 2017 when I first encountered Wroblewski during one of my not-so-random trips to the local book thrift shop. I guess what pushed me to obtain the book despite having barely any iota about the book or the author was the book’s price. Like most of my books, it was left to gather dust on my bookshelf, hence, its inclusion in my 2024 Beat the Backlist Challenge. Nevertheless, I am drawn to the story because it transports me to the past. There is also an interesting leitmotif. Dogs are ubiquitous in the story; at least they were referenced a lot in the opening sections of the story. I am just fifty pages in so I don’t have much to share for now. I will be sharing more of my impressions of the book in this week’s First Impression Friday update.

What have you finished reading?

The last book on my 2024 Top 24 Reading List was Adolfo Bioy Casares’ The Invention of Morel. It was through an online bookseller that I first encountered the Argentine writer back in 2019. It was at this time that my interest in New York Review Books was piqued. With the book left gathering dust on my bookshelf, it has become imperative for me to read the book, hence, its inclusion on my 2024 Top 24 Reading List. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Bioy was the protégé of Jorge Luis Borges, a literary titan, not only within the ambit of Argentine literature but also world literature as a whole. This made me look forward to reading The Invention of Morel even more. I guess I was right in including the book in my 2024 Top 24 Reading List.

Originally published in Spanish in 1940 as La invención de Morel, the deceptively slender novel was Bioy’s first major work, the work that made him a household name; it was the book that elevated Bioy to fame. The novella takes the form of a journal written by an anonymous narrator. He was on the run and arrived on Villings Island, an abandoned island where he came to live alone. Before his arrival, visitors to the island contracted a mysterious sickness with symptoms resembling radiation poisoning. The anonymous writer’s fear of being caught, however, was stronger than his fear of contracting the same disease. Soon, loneliness affects the narrator’s state of mind, until his tranquility is disrupted by the sound of music playing from the museum where a group of carefree people are dancing and laughing. He finally had company but he opted to remain incognito lest they arrest him. He came out of hiding when he was mesmerized by the beauty of Faustine. When he first saw her, she was alone but was then joined by a man named Morel. When he approaches them, it seems that they cannot see him. The Invention of Morel is quite an eccentric novel but it is this layer of eccentricity that belies the deeper themes embedded into it. It is such a unique reading experience that I am at a loss for words on how to fully capture the story and the experience.

From Colombia and Argentina, my literary journey next transported me to Brazil. The Brazilian writer Jorge Amado is among the army of writers who I first encountered through must-read lists; some of his works were included as part of the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. This naturally piqued my interest, precipitating what would be my first official foray into his oeuvre in 2021. Showdown was an interesting and impressionable book although clearly not among my favorites. This, nevertheless, made me even more curious about his works. Three years later, I have read my third book by the prolific Brazilian writer, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands.

Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands transports the readers again to the land of Amado’s birth, Bahia. The story commences ominously with the death of Waldomiro Guimarães, also known as Vadinho, the husband of the titular Dona Flor. During the first Sunday of Carnival in Bahia, he died while dancing the samba, dressed as a woman. Dona Flor had to endure the death, wake, and burial. The story then moves back into the past where we read about her childhood. She was raised by her domineering widowed mother who wanted her children to enter into gainful marriages; it was no surprise Dona Flor’s older siblings left the moment they had the chance. Dona Flor abided by her mother’s wishes but she was adamant that she would marry the man she loved and not the man her mother pushed her to marry. Vadinho, on the other hand, was the bastard son of a prominent figure. He was belligerent but Dona Flor loved him. After mourning Vadinho, Dona Flor attracts the local pharmacist, Dr. Teodoro Madureira. He was Vadinho’s antithesis. He was a pillar of respectability, kind, and considerate, and without ado, Dona Flor accepted his proposal. He provided her a worry-free life. Just when everything settled into a comfortable harmony, Dona Flor’s life was disrupted by a ghost from the past. Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands is an interesting probe into the dichotomies of good and evil. More than that, the novel underscores the diversity of Amado’s works, at least from the three books I read so far.

Having a free-for-all reading journey does have its advantages; this is also one of the reasons I rarely have a reading list at the start of the month. This allows me to have a more flexible reading journey. Without design, I had a mini-foray into the works of Latin American writers which commenced with Nobel Laureate in Literature Gabriel García Márquez’s latest translated novel, Until August. I have concluded it with another familiar name in celebrated Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. It was through must-read lists that I first encountered the critically acclaimed writer. I have since read his two most critically acclaimed works, The Savage Detectives and 2666. They are also among my most memorable reads.

I wasn’t planning on reading Amulet but here I am. This makes it the third book by Bolaño I read. Originally published in 1999 in Spanish as Amuleto, it was eventually translated into English in 2006. The story is narrated by Auxilio Lacouture, dubbed the mother of Mexican poetry. Like most of the characters in Amulet, she was first introduced in The Savage Detectives. Yes, Arturo Belano, the writer’s alter ego, is present in the story as well. She opens the story: This is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it won’t appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller. Told by me, it won’t seem like that. Although, in fact, it’s the story of a terrible crime. The opening line sets the tone for the story which, I learned, was contextualized at the time of the 1968 Movement in Mexico. In particular, the story was set during the army invasion of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) on September 19, 1968, to quell student political protests. Resisting the invasion of the military, Auxilio locked herself up in a fourth-floor lavatory cubicle “for thirteen days”. During this period, she was seized by the flood of memories and reflections, mainly from the time she arrived in Mexico in 1965 to 1976 when Belano left Mexico. Like in the case of The Invention of Morel, I find it a challenge to sum up the overall experience with the book. It is quite ironic because these books are rather slender.

What will you read next?