WWW Wednesday – May 6, 2026

May 6, 2026 Ryan1 Comment

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing at the moment! I am between books.

Recently Finished

I skipped last week because there wasn’t much to report, but since then I have managed to finish a few books. First, I was determined to read through Vermis III: Old Curses & Buried Horrors by Plastiboo, which seemed to follow a structure more similar to the second book but set things up like the first volume; namely, it told what seemed to be a singular character’s journey through these dark and strange lands with an ending unique to that character, yet it started once again with a selection of characters one presumes you’d be choosing from. It made things feel a little disjointed, as I wasn’t sure which it was truly going for at times. The settings, scenarios, and monsters contained within were truly inspiring though, and I continue to really love the art, so it didn’t detract from the experience too much. If a fourth volume is made, I hope things are taken in a somewhat different direction, however.

I also finished reading Dictionary of Fine Distinctions by Eli Burnstein. I don’t have much to say about it except that I loved it through and through. It’ll be great to have around as a reference book to recheck things, and I’m glad I read it cover to cover first so I could see all it had to offer.

Earlier this week I finished reading Absolute Batman Vol. 2: Abomination by Scott Snyder, Marcos Martín, and Nick Dragotta. I liked but didn’t love the first volume, as it had to juggle setting the stage for a new Batman origin story and tell of a compelling conflict in the present. With all of that groundwork laid, I really loved this book. I’ve not read many Bane stories before, but from what I’ve heard about how the character was presented at his inception, this seemed to me like a great return to form for a villain who is supposed to be one of Batman’s greatest rivals. Batman is so often presented as a man who can handle almost anything too, so it was great to see him put into such a vulnerable position by an adversary he is seemingly no match for physically or mentally. Seeing him overcome this challenge and the cost it incurred was sensational.

Reading Next

Next I plan to read Let Me In Your Window by Adam Ellis, a graphic novel collection of horror stories. There are some books I own that I really want to start reading, but I borrowed a bunch of library books like this one again that I really want to read and return first.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – April 22, 2026

April 22, 2026 RyanLeave a comment

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I’m still plucking away at the Dictionary of Fine Distinctions by Eli Burnstein. I don’t have much more to say on it, as it doesn’t exactly change as you get through it. I’m simply continuing to have dorky fun learning the distinctions between similar things and ideas.

Recently Finished

Late last week I finished reading The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin’Ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta. Really I had already finished the story, as it was only about 45 pages long, but the remainder was a lengthy essay about the background of the story and cultural/literary inspirations for it, which helped to put it into a lot better context for me, especially in how it describes the sociopolitical climate in Japan at the time and how that worked its way into the story. It also goes into depth about how, of all things, the original Doctor Dolittle stories by Hugh Lofting had a huge influence on the story and Mothra in particular. One of Lofting’s stories features a gargantuan moth that flies Dr. Dolittle to the Moon to treat the animals that live there, and translations of his books had made their way to Japan some decades prior, to great success. Angles (the translator of this book) drew such clear connections that the influence is undeniable. It’s always fun to see how ideas are birthed from each other.

I also finished a couple volumes of One-Punch Man, but I haven’t got much to say on them. It’s a fun series, but each volume flows into the next in such a way that I don’t really have much of note to say about them.

Reading Next

I’m likely going to read Vermis III: Old Curses & Buried Horrors by Plastiboo soon, and I’ve also got a few more graphic novels from the library that I want to get through so I don’t hang on to them too long. Besides those, I’m not sure what novel I might start next.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – April 15, 2026

April 15, 2026 RyanLeave a comment

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I’m currently nearly halfway through The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin’Ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta. This novella tells the original story that the 1961 film Mothra was based on. It bills itself as a novella, but really it’s really a trio of chapters by each respective author that makes up a story only about 45 pages long, so it’s really a short story in three parts, the remaining 60% or so of the book being essays on the background and creation of the story (which I’ve yet to start reading, so I’m making some inferences here). I enjoyed this little outing well enough, but it was rather simple, so I’m not exactly over the moon about it either. It has me curious about the movie, as I imagine the story may unfold better there, if the it’s more or less what the book covers. I’m hoping the essay sections of the book elevate it more for me.

I’ve also been reading the Dictionary of Fine Distinctions by Eli Burnstein. It’s a pretty straightforward humorous and informative book, highlighting the distinction between commonly confused words and phrases. I’m having a lot more fun with this book than I was expecting to.

Recently Finished

Last week I finally finished reading Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, the 29th Discworld novel and the 6th about Samuel Vimes and the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. I feel like I’ve hit upon much of what I liked about this book in previous weeks, but I will reiterate that I really loved this one, which I can more firmly say now that I’m finished it. I’m curious if Carcer will return in another book or if he’s more of a one-off adversary. Pratchett managed to make a little go a long way with him, because he’s not featured as a persistent issue as much as I thought he would, he’s just a loose end that can’t be left in the past that continually causes some trouble, finding himself on the opposing side of the revolution, but somehow I quite easily found myself utterly despising the man. I’m just surprised I felt so strongly about him considering his level of involvement. It really highlights Pratchett’s characterization skills.

Reading Next

Plans haven’t changed much since I last posted, so upcoming books shouldn’t be a surprise, unless I’m suddenly inspired to pick something I haven’t been talking about.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – April 1, 2026

April 1, 2026 RyanLeave a comment

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I’m still reading Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, the 29th Discworld novel and the 6th about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. I didn’t update last week because I wanted to get a little further along into reading this, especially as I haven’t been reading much of anything else. As expected, I’m really enjoying this novel, perhaps even a little more than the last couple of City Watch books. Taking Vimes and thrusting him 3o years into his own past and forcing him take up the mantle of another man while mentoring himself as a young man was an inspired choice that I’m really enjoying. It’s nice to get the focus almost solely on Vimes too. Though he’s typically a main character, there are usually more POVs he has to share the novel with. I’m also really enjoying the stark contrast between what the Watch was 30 years prior and what it has become over the course of the entire series. It does a good job of making fun of and highlighting the flaws in policing while also upholding a higher standard that can and should always be aspired to.

Recently Finished

Nothing for the past couple of weeks. I’ve been more singularly focused and have taken a bit of a break from the shorter books.

Reading Next

I’m not entirely sure what I want to pick up next in terms of longer reading, though I am finding myself still drawn toward finishing series that I’ve let languish for a long time. There’s the rest of my life for new books, but I shouldn’t let the series I’ve already started and bought the books for just sit there for ages. In the meantime, I do intend to read Vermis III: Old Curses & Buried Horrors by Plastiboo because I simply love these art books, and I’ve also picked up a couple more volumes of One-Punch Man from the library to keep my progress on that series steadily moving forward. Thinking about the Spring to-read list I just put out as well, there’s a really good chance my next read will be The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin’Ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta. Time will tell.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – March 18, 2026

March 18, 2026 RyanLeave a comment

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Right now, I’m reading Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, the 29th Discworld novel and the 6th book in the sub-series about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Though this book was on the to-read list for this year anyway, as I’ve been reading at least a book or two from this series for literally a decade now, I picked this book right now because I’ve felt I’m in a bit of a rut with reading lately. That may be surprising considering the volume of finished books I’m about to mention, but I just haven’t felt as enthusiastic as I’d like. I figured this book would be a fairly safe bet, and for the most part that’s proven true. I’m only about 100 pages in right now, but already it’s thrown a curve ball at me, as I was not expecting Vimes to get thrown back in time. Already seeing what the city used to be like contrasted with how he has turned the Watch into a somewhat reputable police force has been good fun.

Recently Finished

In the intervening two weeks I’ve actually read six different graphic novels, as I made an effort get through the pile I’d accrued from the library. The reason I didn’t post last week was because the first three I read were volumes six to eight of One-Punch Man by ONE and Yusuke Murata. Though I’m enjoying the series well, I really feel like I’m retreading story I already know, and I don’t have any notable commentary to give you here. After those, I read Goliath by Tom Gauld, a graphic novel adapting the story of David and Goliath from the Bible, told from the latter’s perspective. I really enjoyed the books quiet, minimalist approach to subverting the story and painting Goliath in a different light.

I also read Chivalry by Neil Gaiman and Colleen Doran, another graphic novel adapting a short story of Gaiman’s. I was compelled to borrow this book because of how much I enjoyed Doran’s illustrations in Snow, Glass, Apples, another such adaptation. I didn’t like the story of this one quite as much, but she once again created absolutely beautiful illustrations, this time going more for illuminated manuscripts. I hope there are more graphic novels like this. I also read Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës by Isabel Greenberg, a historical fiction graphic novel about the Brontë sisters (and their brother) and the semi-fantastical worlds they created together and the stories therein. It’s a fascinating thing to think about, as this really was just a bunch of siblings writing down their make-believe stories only for themselves, contrasted with the fact that three out of four of them are famous, enduring novelists today. It’s poignant in a way that I find difficult to put into more concrete words.

Reading Next

I’ve no idea what I want to read next. We’ll see where my mood takes me once I’m done with Night Watch.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – March 4, 2026

March 4, 2026 RyanLeave a comment

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing! Once again, I am between books.

Recently Finished

Last week, I read the first volume of Absolute Batman by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta. Overall, I liked it quite well, but with all the hype around it, I wish I liked it more than I did. Ain’t it always the way with hype. I think their more grounded approach to the character this time around is fun, presenting him with a lot more physicality and less hi-tech at his disposal. They do work in gadgets fairly well in their own way, however, as the story emphasizes Bruce’s genius and ingenuity as an engineer, able to do a lot with limited resources. His reworked backstory was interesting, I especially like the way a number of his typical rogues got retooled into childhood friends, but what I had trouble getting into was the scale of the villainy at play right from issue one, basically involving a shadowy, global organization destabilizing Gotham with extreme violence. I would have preferred it starting off more scaled down.

This week I finished reading When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen, and goodness I really wanted to like this book. I believe I said so last week, but I’ll say it again, I by no means think the book is poorly written, but it is perhaps weakly put together. It felt like it was a lot more interested in social commentary than it was building a compelling story. The social commentary does do a good job of appropriately setting the atmosphere and laying the foundation for some of the themes it tries to touch upon, but the characters and plot just felt bland and basic to me, respectively. Even when the ghosts finally show up, it felt more like a tour through ghastly scenes rather than anything that added narrative tension. So much unfolds and resolves off page as well, leaving so much feeling anticlimactic by the end.

Reading Next

Next, I’m going to get back to some library books I’ve let languish for the last month or so. Specifically, I’m going to starting reading through the next three volumes of One-Punch Man that I need to get to, starting with volume six.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – February 25, 2026

February 25, 2026 Ryan2 Comments

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I’m currently a little over halfway through When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen, and I’m sorry to say that I’m not enjoying this book all that much. The writing is by no means bad, but so far it has spent much of its time ruminating on class and racial tensions with only hints to the encroaching horror, which I can only assume is imminent at this point in the story. I was really hoping it would be a going concern well before now. The book’s themes related to class and race are not problems in and of themselves, but it doesn’t feel like they’re in service of a point beyond, perhaps, the ghosts of the past eventually coming to the fore and wreaking havoc on the living who so crassly forget their history, which I think would be a woefully obvious and straightforward direction to take things. The characters also feel a little flat, their motivations understandable but too simple. I’m really hoping a development unfolds that turns this whole book around for me; otherwise, it’s pretty middling overall.

Recently Finished

Last week I read through Set to Sea by Drew Weing, a short graphic novel about a big lug who is an aspiring poet living a down-and-out life, until one night he is clubbed over the head and shanghaied onto a vessel bound for Hong Kong. On this voyage, despite a miserable start, he learns how to be a sailor, forges bonds of friendship, and develops a passion for life and the sea that he never had before, all the while refining his poetic craft. I really liked this book’s art style, which feels reminiscent of old cartoon strips, with only a single panel corresponding to every page. It was a delightful little story and I’m grateful to the library for carrying it, as it’s likely I otherwise wouldn’t have ever come across it.

Reading Next

Continuing to read through the massive list of comics I’ve inexplicably borrowed from the library all at the same time, I’m going to read the first volume of Absolute Batman by Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta. It’s due back soon and is a highly reserved book, so I really don’t want to delay giving it back any further. I’m looking forward to starting this book, as I’ve heard and seen great things about it. Batman seems to be scaled down from his usual depth of resources, and I like that a lot of the villains are being given more of a horror bent. As much as I enjoy that the main continuities of comic book universes keep going, I do love a good “elseworld” story where I can just start at volume one without having to think too much about previous titles.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – February 18, 2026

February 18, 2026 RyanLeave a comment

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing! I’m between books again.

Recently Finished

Last week I finished reading Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung. I enjoyed it right up to the end, especially its coverage of how this nameless Institute goes about helping its various ghosts pass on. It was an interesting blend of the paranormal and mundanity. On the one hand, the stories within recount very troubling series of events that the characters must grapple with while haunted by a variety of unusual spectres. On the other hand, it feels like containing and studying these haunted objects is really just another job, with its own hazards, sure, but subsumed and accounted for by modernity nonetheless. I also really like that the title of the book is based on the author’s experience with a sign printed in English in Korea; it was indeed just the midnight timetable at a bus terminal, but she found something about the wording ominous and wanted an excuse to use it somewhere.

I also read through Moby Dick by Christophe Chabouté, a graphic novel adaptation of Herman Melville’s classic novel. Reading this comic was an interesting exercise after having read the original novel around this time just last year. It does an excellent job of distilling the actual events that unfold in the novel, especially as they pertain to Ahab’s mad obsession and the Pequod‘s eventual confrontation with the whale. However, Ishmael’s story almost entirely evaporates in the wake of Ahab’s, such that I sometimes forgot he was supposed to be there. It’s understandable that the long diversions into the nuances of whaling are left out of an adaptation like this, but it’s interesting to see just how much that diminishes our perspective character. It preserves the essential essence of the work with great merit, but cannot truly replace the literature.

Reading Next

There are a few things I’m planning to read next, some of which I have from the library and otherwise from books I own. I won’t go over all the library books I have to get through right now, but what I’m planning to read next is Set to Sea by Drew Weing, a comic about a big lug and aspiring poet who ends up shanghaied aboard a vessel bound for Hong Kong. I grabbed it off the shelf at the library thanks to my ever-present desire to borrow random graphic novels I would never buy. It’s got a very cartoon-strip style that looks fun too. Also, I’m going to start reading When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen, a book that I only just bought over the weekend. A monthly book mixer I attend has a “celebrating Black authors” theme this month and I was regretful to realize there doesn’t appear to be anything amongst what I’ve read recently that qualifies. This book had caught my eye in the past thanks to this edition’s fantastic cover, so when I came across it at a store during a trip out of town I decided to pick it up. I probably won’t finish it before Saturday, but I can at least get started reading it.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – February 11, 2026

February 11, 2026 Ryan3 Comments

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Since last week I started reading Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung; I’m pretty close to finishing it, as I’m a little past the halfway point. I’m hoping to have it done fairly soon, especially since I need to get it back to the library before it’s overdue, since I can’t renew my loan. I’m enjoying this book quite well, and I must say it contains some of the most unique ghost stories I’ve ever read, though I don’t find them to be particularly scary. Weird and strange is right up my alley though, so I’m not complaining. Having read a few translated books from Asia now over the last year or so, mostly from Japan and now this one from Korea, I’m noticing something odd. Maybe it’s just a quirk of the genres I’ve been reading, but they all seem written in much more of a formal style that keeps the reader more at arm’s length from the characters and their more inward experiences. I have to wonder if this is a side effect of translation not capturing the full depth of the original language or just cultural differences in how they write prose.

Recently Finished

Nothing this week! I’ve been needing to coordinate reading time differently after a resurgence of work that I’m grateful has continued.

Reading Next

Though there are a number of my own books I really ought to get to, I’m currently a little buried under a mountain of books I’ve borrowed from the library. I have three more volumes of One-Punch Man to get to and the first volume of Absolute Batman, but I think what I will endeavour to read next is a graphic novel adaptation of Moby Dick by French author Christophe Chabouté. I read the original novel last year and feel compelled to see how it is adapted visually. Though I appreciated the novel as a literary classic, I had a bit of trouble reading the dialect, so I’m hoping I will better be able to appreciate the story in a visual form. With that in mind, I hope it sticks closer to the source material, though I imagine it will take some liberties in being an adaptation.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – February 4, 2026

February 4, 2026 Ryan2 Comments

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing! I’m currently between books. Work got unexpectedly busier during the latter half of January, so I found myself not having time to post one of these for the past couple of weeks.

Recently Finished

Firstly, last week I finished reading Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, a graphic memoir about the author’s life and relationship with her mother. I enjoyed this book well, particularly how organically it represented the nuances of Bechdel’s relationship with her mother, which is fraught with issues but by no means completely volatile. It fascinatingly delves into a lot of psychology as well, through therapy sessions and examinations of specific literature, which I actually had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it was indeed interesting and insightful, but I found it made the overall reading experience loftier than I was expecting, especially as I often felt I couldn’t fully appreciate/undestand the theory I was being presented with.

I also read through Ice by Anna Kavan, an apocalyptic novel about a man continually searching for a beautiful young woman with whom he is obsessed, the world slowly crumbling around them due to persistent conflict while the aftereffects of a weapon of mass destruction slowly cover the globe in ice. I’m plagued by ambivalence with this book, as I can appreciate a lot about it as a literary work but found its hallucinatory stream of consciousness and indistinct narrative a little difficult to get into. It especially had a tendency to have certain events unfold, only to pull back and vaguely indicate that what you just read for a page or so was (at least partially) fabricated by the narrator. If I wasn’t on my toes while reading, it was easy to get lost in what was going on, especially as no people or places are named. I can see how this approach might work for others, and it does deal with some themes in an interesting way, but I found it more laborious than I was hoping.

Reading Next

My next read is Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, a library book I specifically requested they purchase that I’ve since had borrowed for a while. As such, I only have about a week to read it before it’s overdue, but I’m hoping I can get through it in a reasonable amount of time. The book follows a night shift employee who works at a mysterious research centre that houses cursed objects, each item carrying with them their own dark history. I originally came across this book in a horror bookstore in Toronto, and while I showed some restraint in not picking it up, I’m glad I was able to get the library to do so, though if I like it enough I may end up buying myself a copy anyway.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.