WWW Wednesday – August 27, 2025

www_wednesdays

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, after half a decade and goodness knows how many to-read lists including this book, I have finally started reading A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers, the second novel in the Wayfarers series. I actually could’ve posted about this last week, but I had so much going on that I entirely forgot about posting that Wednesday. Whoops! I’m about 150 pages or so in and I’m enjoying it quite a lot. I don’t find myself quite as endeared to the characters as I did the crew in the first book, but it is making for fascinating science fiction to witness an AI meant to be housed in a ship, with all the sensors and viewpoints at its disposal there, try to exist limited to a humanoid body. An especially interesting consideration is how memory would actually work, as there’s only so much space for data storage that is limited to technology rather than a brain when it doesn’t have network access. So far it’s a going concern for Sidra, our protagonist, and I’m curious to see if and how it is resolved. Also, I’m convinced Blue wants to get freaky with Sidra but I can’t prove it.


Recently Finished

The very week I started it I finished reading Strange Houses by Uketsu, and I must say I was kind of let down by it by the end. The integration of floor plans was certainly interesting, especially as it has you follow the characters’ back and forth speculation about what such design choices could indicate and why, but in the end I just found it to be too bland. I thought the author and his friend’s predictions were entirely too accurate to what was really happening, and the revelatory breakdown of what was truly going on was such a formal and straightforward explanation that it was hard to really feel swept up by any of it. It’s just a bunch of names and being told who, what, and where outside any traditional narrative style; it was almost like reading a report of events. I will say, I like that certain things remained obscure and don’t quite add up if you tally it all together, but my intrigue isn’t strong enough to keep me thinking about it either. I hope I enjoy Strange Pictures more.


Reading Next

I’ve been meaning to get to some nonfiction books for a while now, so tentatively I think I will read The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus next, especially since the Halloween season is right around the corner, at which point it will be all about the spooky.

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

WWW Wednesday – August 13, 2025

www_wednesdays

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

Instead of continuing on with books in series I’ve planned to finish up, on Monday I started reading Strange Houses, a Japanese mystery/horror novel by the enigmatic author Uketsu. I was in the mood to read something more horror related and suspected this book would be a swifter read, so I went with my feelings instead of grander plans. I was right about it being a quick read, as I’m already over 60% of the way through it after just a couple of reading sessions. So far, it’s definitely more of a mystery than horror, though the inclusion of floor plans and the strangeness of their designs definitely has a creepy effect. A lot of it feels a bit too much like rampant speculation on the part of the characters, however, and I’m wondering whether that will factor back into the story or if their active imaginations will inexplicably ring true.


Recently Finished

Since last week, I’ve read two graphic novels that I borrowed from the library. The first was Medea by Blandine Le Callet and Nancy Peña, a retelling of the life of the fearsome sorceress from Greek mythology. Overall, I enjoyed it very much, especially the efforts it made to ground mythologized settings into a plausible historical context. Personally, I do prefer when the mythology is fully and unambiguously embraced, but I do like the presentation of it as something that actually happened, especially in how Medea, though obviously not an impartial narrator, mush reckon with the myths that have grown around her notoriety, juxtaposed with what she claims really happened.

I also read Haruki Murakami Manga Stories 1, which is a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami adapted into comic book form by Jean-Christophe Deveney and PMGL. Though the title refers to it as manga, I will call this a graphic novel because, as far as I can tell, it was adapted by a Western team. Though Murakami is a well-regarded novelist and I’ve heard of many of his books over the years, for some reason (big frog) this was the first book with his name on it to ever grab my attention. None the stories blew me away, but I have found myself ruminating on them a little over the past week. I enjoyed their unabashed strangeness and meditative atmosphere. I’m certainly more curious about Murakami’s work now too, though I don’t think I’ll rush out to pick any up.


Reading Next

I’ve not entirely made up my mind on what I want to read next. I’m still being weirdly moody about it.

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