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! We are a couple of days away from greeting the third month of the year. How has your year been? I hope that the year is showering you with favors. I hope that 2025 will be a year of prayers answered and goals achieved. I hope that you are already making progress on your goals and targets. If not, it is still fine. Sometimes just simply making it through the day is enough. I fervently wish that everyone achieves their goals and reaches their dreams this year. Personally, I have several goals this year in all facets of life. In reading and writing alone, I have lined up several already. For one, I already set my Goodreads goal to 100 books, the first time I am doing so from the onset. It is my goal to end the year with more translated books than books originally written in English. I am hopeful that I will be able to achieve them.

To help achieve my secondary goal, I have commenced my reading year with works of East Asian writers. Another reason for this foray into the works of East Asian writers is the release of recently minted Nobel Laureate in Literature Han Kang’s latest translated novel, We Do Not Part. The novel was originally published in 2021 and is narrated by Kyungha, a woman living alone in Seoul on the brink of depression. Kyungha’s torpor was disrupted by a call from her friend who was recuperating in a hospital following a work accident. Inseon asked Kyungha to travel to Jeju to feed Ama, Inseon’s bird. Despite the snowstorm that swept Jeju, Kyungha made her way to Inseon’s family home where Kyungha learned more about Inseon’s family’s troubled history. In learning about Inseon’s family’s history, she learns more about the island’s history, particularly the Jeju Massacre which I first learned about in Lisa See’s The Island of Sea Women. Kang’s latest novel reminds me of two of Kang’s previous works: Human Acts in its exploration of Korea’s ruptured history and White Book in the novel’s pensive tone. I am just under a hundred pages away from completing the book and I have nothing but praise for Kang.

What have you finished reading?

The past week has been quite busy for some reason. I also cannot understand the source of the busyness. Nevertheless, I was able to complete two books which is not a bad number overall. The first of the two books I read in the past week is Hsiung Shih-I’s The Bridge of Heaven is already the fifth novel written by a Chinese writer I read this year. This already surpassed the most books written by Chinese writers I read in a year; the previous record was three I reached in 2023. Chinese literature, despite its vast influence and extensiveness, is sadly a part of the literary world I have barely explored. This is one of the reasons why I kicked off my 2025 reading journey with the works of East Asian writers. Before the pandemic, I had never encountered Hsiung before but through an online bookseller, I came across him.

Originally published on January 1, 1943, the novel commences in the 5th year of the reign of Emperor Kwang Hsu (1879), with the construction of a bridge across a small river outside of Nanchang, Kiangsi (Jiangxi). At the heart of the story is the Li family, starting with brothers Li Ming and Li Kang who have divided the family home equally between them. However, the brothers are the antithesis of each other. Ming is respected across the district because of his devotion “to such excellent and praiseworthy work.” Highly superstitious, he is considered the more financially successful of the two: “Heaven had been very kind to him.” Kang, on the other hand, was the proverbial black sheep although he was more clever than Ming and was also the favored child. He was, in his own way, respected by the denizens of the district because of his progressive ideas. The crux of the story, however, was when Ming’s wife was about to give birth. The child died during childbirth. Heartbroken, Ming went and bought the son of an impoverished couple who gave birth at the same time his wife gave birth. Lo and behold, Ming went home to find out that his wife had given birth to a twin. With no recourse, Ming raised the two boys, Li Ta Tung and Li Shiao Ming. Shiao Ming and Ta Tung also had a precarious relationship because of their disparities. The Bridge of Heaven, however, was more than just an exploration of family dynamics. Contemporary Chinese history figured prominently in the story, particularly in the book’s second half. Romance and the slow integration of Chinese traditions with western ideals take the forefront of the story. It was set, after all, at the turn of the 20th century when major changes were shaping Chinese society. The Bridge of Heaven provides an evocative portrait of a nation at the crossroads of history.

From China, my next read took me to the Korean peninsula. It has not escaped my notice how Korean literature has recently been rising out of relative obscurity and taking the global stage. I guess this can be attributed to Han Kang’s 2016 International Booker Prize victory with The Vegetarian. More works of Korean literature have since been translated and made available to Anglophone readers. Some of these works have also been earning accolades across the globe. Among them is Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City which I first heard of when it was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. While it did not win the prize, it piqued my interest. However, it would take a couple more years before I could get to read it.

Originally published in 2019 as 대도시의 사랑법, the novel was translated into English in 2021. Love in the Big City deviates from the traditional novel structure; it is comprised of thematically interconnected short stories that reminded me of recent Japanese novels. The novel weaves in and out of different periods. The novel’s primary voice is Young, a homosexual Korean man in his thirties. His story started when he was 20 years old when he met a fellow university student Jaehee who became his best friend. The focus of the story, however, was Young’s homosexual awakening and how he navigated adulthood as a gay Korean man. Young was raised by an evangelical Christian mother who, upon recognizing her son’s homosexuality when he was still young – she saw him kissing a boy – sent him to a gay conversion therapy center. Young’s mother’s attitude toward his sexuality is reflective of how Korea views homosexuality. The attitude of Koreans toward homosexuality became more apparent as Young navigated the world of adulthood. Young experienced being in a relationship with a discreet gay man who was a good decade older than him. The Korean gay man’s experience – particularly the difficulties of finding love in a society that is not homosexual-friendly – was vividly captured by Park but the novel provides pleasure in its easy-going style.

What will you read next?