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?

Whoa. Just like that, we are nearly halfway through the last month of the year. In a matter of days, we will be welcoming a new year. As time takes its natural course and the year draws to its inevitable close, I hope 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. More importantly, I hope everyone is doing well in body, mind, and spirit. 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. I am already done with my 2024 Top 24 Reading List and I am just two books shy of completing my 2024 Beat the Backlist Challenge list.

The second to the last book on the said list I read is Corban Addison’s The Tears of Dark Water. I think this is a book I bought along with David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle about eight years ago; both books are part of my 2024 Beat the Backlist Challenge. The Tears of Dark Water has two levels. The first level takes place in the Indian Ocean where David and Quentin Parker’s sailboat was held hostage by Ismail Adan Ibrahim and his Somali cohorts. The negotiations were ironed out; quick-witted Ismail was playing a mental chess with Paul Derrick, an acclaimed FBI negotiator. However, the deal fell through, leaving David dead and Ismail on trial in the United States for his crime. The unraveling of the courtroom drama forms the meat of the novel’s second level. There is more than meets the eye as the novel takes the readers through the conflict in Somalia. Somalia, in the past few decades, has established a reputation for its warring warlords and their piracy. I was at the edge of my seat reading the novel because of its several layers. I am now looking forward to how the courtroom scene will unfold.

What have you finished reading?

The past two weeks have been tedious. With the year-end approaching, regulatory requirements are also looming. I have been preparing for them. Nevertheless, I try to find some time to read as much books as I can. Despite this busy time, I was able to finish two books, both of which are part of my Beat the Backlist Challenge. The first one is a beloved literary classic, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. It was way back in 2019 when I obtained a copy of the book; it was ubiquitous in must-read lists, hence, my curiosity. By reading the book, I was shooting two birds with one stone as the book was listed as one of the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die; it is my goal to read at least twenty books form the said list although I am lagging behind in this goal.

Originally published in 1850, the book opened with a long preamble of how the story came about. Not that I mind as it provided me a glimpse into Hawthorne’s writing process. Anyway, the story proper is set in seventeenth century Boston which was. back then, a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, was led from the town prison with her infant daughter Pearl. She was wearing on her breast the titular Scarlet letter, “A”. Before her was a crowd waiting for her punishment as she was convicted of adultery. We learn that Hester was sent to America by her older husband so that they can resettle; he was to follow. In the intervening period, Hester got pregnant with the paternity of her child remaining a mystery. Hester was resolute in refusing to disclose who Pearl’s father is, even before the minister of Hester’s church, Arthur Dimmesdale. The punishment for Hester’s crime was execution. However, the town elders instead gave her a less severe punishment: public shaming, the scarlet letter, and a couple of years in incarceration. Upon her release, Hester lived a secluded life at the outskirts of town, earning a meager income from her needlework. Meanwhile, her husband took on a new identity, Roger Chillingworth, intent on unmasking the identity of her wife’s lover. Overall, The Scarlet Letter was quite an intriguing and I must admit, I did struggle a bit with it. I had to deliberately read the book slowly in order to wade through its various elements. For sure, despite its deceptively slim appearance, the novel is complex.

The second book I read in the past week was M.R. Carey’s The Girl With All the Gifts. Like The Tears of Dark Water and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, it was nearly a decade since I obtained a copy of the book. I was intrigued by what it had in store back then. But I guess the magic immediately wore off because the book was left to gather dust on my bookshelf. I have been meaning to read the book but I kept gathering more books which have piqued my interest. There are just too many good (and bad) books out there. To finally tick the book off from my long outstanding reading list, I included it on my 2024 Beat the Backlist Challenge List. Finally, I got to read the book.

While I had ideas, I was blindsided by the book. Basically, it features zombies, akin to The Maze Runner. I understand that it is a work of dystopian fiction but I was thinking along the lines of The Chaos Walking trilogy. Regardless, the story takes the readers to the English countryside, to an underground bunker known as Hotel Echo where we meet the titular girl with all the gifts, ten-year-old Melanie. She was not the only child in the bunker. Along with other children, she attends a class escorted by armed children from prison-like cells to the classroom. Apparently, the children are no ordinary children. They are “hungry” children, infected with a pathogen called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. The children are the keys to understanding the pathogen. Dr. Caroline Caldwell thinks she is on the way to a breakthrough. This, however, entails dissecting Melanie’s brain. Melanie’s teacher, Helen Justineau, however did not allow it to happen. Shortly after Helen disrupted Dr. Caldwell’s surgery, chaos ensued. A combination of junkers and hungries attacked the bunker. Dr. Caldwell, Helen, Melanie, along with Sergeant Eddie Parks and Private Kieran Gallagher, were able to retreat. What ensued is a journey across a landscape altered by the pathogen. The Girl With All the Gifts is a pulsating read which rarely lets up. It is packed with action and kept me at the edge of the seat for the rest of the ride.

What will you read next?