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

Finally I’m posting one of these in 2023 (albeit quite late in the day). I have started reading something new this year, Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle, though I’ve only just read the first chapter, so I haven’t gotten far enough to have any substantial impressions to share about it. So far, I’ve gotten a vague understanding of the state of mind the main character exists in and impressions on life-changing bodily harm he inflicted upon himself. With luck, I’m hoping to make some good progress on it by next week. I enjoyed Universal Harvester well enough, which was the last Darnielle novel that I read, but a lasting impression is that it didn’t quite meet my expectations either. With virtually no expectations for this book, I’m hoping for a better result by the end.

Recently Finished

Finally, I finished reading A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris. This book was the reason I hadn’t posted one of these yet in the new year; I just really didn’t want to be banging the same drum about having to finish this book. That being said, I really enjoyed the reading experience. I believe I had been doing it a disservice by initially going at it slowly. All things considered, 400 or so pages really blew by, and his perspective on the world was enjoyable to behold, exploring subjects humorous, mundane, and poignant. What became most surreal about this book was how familiar the events he comments on were as the years became more and more recent. It’s a bit unnerving to see 17 years condensed in such a way on its own, but the emergence of the pandemic and other huge political issues of the last 6 or so years was a stark reminder of how candid these diaries are.

I also read the second volume of Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughn, finally. I really wish I had read this closer to the first volume, as I’m still having a bit of trouble keeping track of who is who among some of the main cast, though only with a couple of the characters. I’m honestly a little tempted to go back and read it again, just so I can appreciate it a little better. I’m not sure what it was, but something clicked for me with this volume and now I’m into it in a way that I wasn’t after finishing the first volume, so that’s nice. I’m really enjoying the idea that this story’s time travel doesn’t allow for branching timelines, so I’m curious as to what the capabilities and constraints are under this system. Can things be changed or is everything set in stone, it’s only a matter of the order we’re seeing things happen in? I have the third volume already, so I’ll hopefully be reading that soon.

Reading Next

With my focus being on getting into Wolf in White Van right now, I haven’t really decided what I definitely want to read next, but I do know that Springfield Confidential by Mike Reiss is still of great interest to me, so I may be reading that in the near future. I’m trying not to stress reading specific books too much though, so we’ll see where whims take me.

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