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?

It is already the middle of the week. How has your week been? I hope it’s going well and going in your desired direction. Woah. Time flies! We are already midway through the fifth month of the year. How has the week and the year been so far? I hope it’s going well for everybody. I hope it is going your way, and that you are being showered with blessings and good news. I hope the rest of the year will be prosperous, brimming with wealth, but more importantly, good health. I hope everyone is making progress on their goals and is on the way to achieving them. I am now nearly midway through completing 100 books for the fourth year in a row; reading 100 books in a year used to be a dream but it has become a reality and to think that I am about to make it four years in a row is simply surreal. As my 2025 reading journey is in full swing, I find myself in a very familiar but rarely explored literary territory: Asian literature.

This reading journey has now taken me to a literary territory close to me (physically) but, unfortunately, I have to explore more. I am referring to South East Asian literature. This is why I obtained a copy of Saneh Sangsuk’s The Understory. It was through an online bookseller that I encountered the Thai writer. Apparently, Sangsuk is quite highly regarded in Thai literary circles. This makes me look forward to reading the book more. As I have yet to start the book, I don’t have much impression of it. Nevertheless, I will be sharing my initial impressions of the book in this week’s First Impression Friday update, or perhaps not because, by that time, I will be on the mountain trail. Regardless, I can’t wait to see what the book has in store although I can sense some layers of magic to it akin to Eka Kurniawan’s Man Tiger.

What have you finished reading?

Although I am drawing closer to the inevitable conclusion of my foray into Asian literature, my reading journey is still in full swing. In the past week, I managed to pick up pace. This comes as a surprise but I still welcome it. In the past week, I was able to complete three books after a stretch of two book weeks; this is actually my weekly reading average. The first of these books was Eileen Chang’s Half a Lifelong Romance, a book I initially featured in one of my Goodreads Monday updates. A quick search of recommended works of contemporary Chinese literature yielded this book. It was more than enough to pique my interest. Besides, my venture into the works of female Chinese writers is quite limited so reading the book was an opportunity to extend this.

Originally serialized in a Shanghai newspaper Yi Bao (亦報) in 1948, under the title Eighteen Springs (十八春), it was collectively published as a single volume in 1950. The novel initially introduces Shijun who is reflecting on his past, particularly his brief love affair with Manzhen. The duo were introduced to each other by their common friend, Shuhui. The three friends were all working in Shanghai to fulfill their dreams. However, they were all weighed down by their duties to their families. Amid their busy schedules, they managed to catch up during lunchtime at a local café. When they were first introduced, Manzhen immediately captured the interest of Shijun. This attraction became stronger and the development of their romance was one of the novel’s strongest facets. But as fate would have it, their budding love affair would be nipped in the bud. They cannot pursue their love affair because of family duties and traditions. Further, their relationship was undone by selfishness and conceit. The story then diverges into two main plotlines chronicling the families of Shijun and Manzhen. Their contrasting family stories highlight the traditions that permeate Chinese families and how these traditions and the responsibility to adhere to them impact the family members. Drama and intrigue but a tender romance make Half a Lifelong Romance a worthy read.

Even though I am in the midst of an Asian literary journey, this has not precluded me from going back to where I started this year: East Asian literature. East Asia, after all, is part of Asia. However, one of the reasons why I followed up my foray into East Asian literature with a venture into Asian literature is because of the upcoming release of Sayaka Murata’s latest translated novel, Vanishing World; and well, some books that are part of my ongoing reading challenges that I have yet to read. I have been looking forward to the book when I learned about its release earlier this year. Murata has earned a fan in me with her unsparing gaze in her widely acclaimed novel Convenience Store Woman.

Originally published in 2015 as 消滅世界, the novel was translated into English by Ginny Tapley Takemori. The novel is set in the not-so-distant future; in a way, this is a dystopian novel. Serving as a guide across this new world is Amane Sakaguchi, the novel’s main character. With an exponentially decreasing birth rate, society has devised various methods to conceive children. Sex has become taboo and children were mostly conceived through artificial means. Conceiving a child through copulation is seen as abnormal. Romantic love is rare. But most interestingly, men now grow fetuses in a sac of artificial skin. How the world has flipped. Amane, meanwhile, was a deviation because she was conceived through physical sex; modern society has deemed sex and romantic love as irrelevant and unnecessary. Amane was an interesting case because she was born from these two, hence, the stigma surrounding her. It did not help her that she was in love with a fictional character. But as she grows up, she has to learn to strike a balance between modern society and the history of her conception. In a way, I was not expecting anything less from Murata. I was reminded of Earthlings although Earthlings was a little graphic. Vanishing World also reminds me of another recently translated Japanese work, Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird. Nevertheless, Vanishing World is an interesting and compelling work that will unsurprisingly raise many’s eyebrows.

My last book in this three-book stretch takes me to the other side of the continent, to the Middle East. Again, this is also a section of the literary world I have not explored as much as I would want to. When I encountered Elias Khoury’s My Name is Adam through an online bookseller, my interest was immediately piqued. I became more interested in the book when I learned it was set in Palestine. During this year’s Asian literature venture, I have already read a work by an Israeli writer so I felt it was also necessary to read a work about Palestine. I do believe I have encountered the Lebanese writer Elias Khoury (إلياس خوري) – he is sympathetic to the fate of the Palestinians – before but this is the first time I have read one of his works.

Originally published in 2016 as أولاد الغيتو- اسمي آدم, My Name is Adam is the first volume of Khoury’s latest series, Children of the Ghetto. With the recent events in Palestine, this book feels like a timely and relevant read. Anyway, the titular Adam is Adam Dannoun, a melancholic man who is self-exiled in New York City and working in a Middle Eastern restaurant. In the novel’s introduction, we learn that he was introduced to Elias Khoury by Sarang Lee, one of the author’s students; this is how the novel was framed. However, the writer and Adam’s friendship was cut short when a film based on Khoury’s book Gate of the Sun was shown. They lost touch and the next time Khoury got updated about Adam, Adam had already passed away from a fire. However, some of Adam’s notebooks survived the fire. Sarang gave these notebooks to her mentor who decided to publish them. These notebooks contain Adam’s notes for two books he was planning to write. One was an attempt at writing his own novel while the other was an attempt to write about his life. These two books provide glimpses into Adam’s family history but more importantly, they provide insights into the history of the Palestinian cause, starting with the Nakba, a germane event in the Palestinians’ lives. The horror of the Nakba as captured in the novel reminded me how I know very little about this event. It captured vividly how the Palestinians were abused, forcibly removed from their homeland, placed in ghettos, and even tortured. These details are the reasons why I appreciate this book, as heartbreaking as it can be at times. My Name is Adam makes me look forward to the rest of the series.

What will you read next?