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?

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Currently Reading

Nothing! I’m between books again.

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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.

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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.