It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report
What I am reading now
What I just finished reading
What I intend to read next
This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.
What I am reading now
Right now, I am reading a book by one of my favorite cozy thriller authors (if that’s not an oxymoron), Catriona McPherson. I am not very far along, but it is already mysterious. McPherson is one of a few authors whose books I preorder as soon as I know they are coming out. This one is called The Dead Room, about a young widow who moves home to Scotland, where she has not been for years. Difficulties with family are hinted at, and there are intermittent sections in which she appears to be a prisoner.
What I just finished reading
My last book was just terrific, a historical novel set in far northern Sweden in the 19th century. It’s partially a mystery, but it features a famous pastor, a real person, who instigated a religious revival in the region. Most of the novel is narrated by the pastor’s Sami assistant, almost his son. It’s To Cook a Bear by Mikael Niemi.
What I will read next
I think I’ll be reading The Captain’s Daughter by Alexander Pushkin. I have read a small quantity of Pushkin’s poetry, but I feel I’ll get along better with prose. I found this novella when looking for ideas for Novellas in November. It’s an NYRB edition, and I usually find those to be good.
It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report
What I am reading now
What I just finished reading
What I intend to read next
This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.
What I am reading now
I’m reading Precipice by Robert Harris. It’s about British Prime Minister Asquith at the start of World War I and his affair with a much younger woman, Venetia Stanley (a descendent of the Venetia Stanley who was the main character in Viper Wine, by the way). Usually, his books are well researched and quite suspenseful, but I’m finding this one slow to get into and so far not that interesting. We’ll see if it improves. It seems like a similar subject to his book Munich, which was about Chamberlain trying to fight off World War II, but so far I found that novel a lot more compelling.
What I just finished reading
I just read Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish by Francesca Peacock. I’m not quite sure what possessed me to read two biographies of the same woman so close together (I read Mad Madge by Katie Whitaker last year), but I still found it interesting. This one is more academic than the other.
What I will read next
Now, that’s the question this time. I periodically look for books for my projects at the library first, hoping not to have to buy them, and this time four of them arrived at the same time. (I put them on hold and go pick them up when they’re ready.) I had been waiting for Telephone by Percival Everett for months. For the second time, it looks like the library gave up on it being returned and bought a new copy, because I was first in line for the hold and it took me several months to get it, and it looks new and unread. Once I read it, I will have finished the shortlist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize. It’s about a geologist who doesn’t seem to know how to deal with his family’s problems. If it’s anything like the others by him I’ve read, it’s funny and angry.
Also for my Pulitzer Prize projectis The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen. It will be the first book I’ve read from the 2022 shortlist. I don’t usually check out two books for the same project at once, but I had been waiting so long to get Telephone and had no idea it would arrive at the same time. This book is supposed to be funny, so I might read it last. It seems as if my sense of humor is out of sync with other people’s these days.
The book that sounds most interesting to me is These Days by Lucy Caldwell, about two women living in Belfast during World War II. It’s the last book I have to read for the 2023 Walter Scott Historical Fiction prize shortlist, so that’s another reason to read it first. It hasn’t been available from the library until now.
Finally, there’s Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, which combines two things I’m not terribly interested in, coming-of-age novels and sports (although I used to follow tennis, which is the sport in the book, and yes, I have reviewed two tennis books on this blog, Openby Andre Agassi and Levels of the Game by John McPhee). It’s the last book I need to read for the 2023 shortlist for the Booker Prize, though. That’s three books that are the last ones I need to read for a certain year and prize, which makes it harder to pick. It has one advantage over the others. It’s very short (although I notice the print is tiny).
Which one would you pick? Maybe I’ll let my commenters decide. And what have you been reading lately?
Well, I was really silly when I listed the books I read by Irish writers, because I searched by Ireland! But all my reading of Irish writers wasn’t set in Ireland. So, here is my original post, revised. The two additional books are listed with both the title and writer’s names in bold!
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Cathy of 746 Books is hosting the 12th year of Reading Ireland Month, and although I usually participate just a bit by reviewing a book or two by an Irish author, I thought I’d take her suggestion this time and make a post about books by Irish authors I’ve read or reviewed during the last year. So here goes, I think in order of the reading! These are all books read in 2025, so there’s some overlap with last year’s event.
Following the lead of Bookish Beck, I have been keeping track of instances of book serendipity, where the same subject comes up in more than one place around the same time. My lists aren’t nearly as comprehensive as Beck’s, maybe because I don’t have as much attention to detail. But here are a few I’ve noted in the past few months:
References to Pompey the Great in Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare and The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, read on the same day.
A transport with “Gypsy” in its name in Ancestry by Simon Mawer and The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller, read one after another.
Factions among the faculty of a girls’ schoolin The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark and the short story “The Greek Play” by H. C. Bailey in the British Library “Lessons in Crime,” read one after another.
A son of an important man disappears from schoolin adjacent stories in the British Library collection Lessons in Crime, “The Adventure of the Priory School” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and “The Missing Undergraduate” by Henry Wade.
In the category of related serendipity, two different blog reviews of books by Robert van Gulik randomly read on the same day.
Cathy of 746 Books is hosting the 12th year of Reading Ireland Month, and although I usually participate just a bit by reviewing a book or two by an Irish author, I thought I’d take her suggestion this time and make a post about books by Irish authors I’ve read or reviewed during the last year. So here goes, I think in order of the reading! These are all books read in 2025, so there’s some overlap with last year’s event.
It’s time for another Classics Club Spin. To participate, post a numbered list of 20 books from your Classics Club list (here’s mine)before Sunday, February 8th. Classics Club will announce a number on that day, and that determines the book to read before the 29th of March.
I think I’ve participated in every spin since I became a Classic Club member. At this date, I have just eight books on my list, so I’ll be repeating to get 20:
The Tavern Knight by Raphael Sabatini
Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare
The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Princess of Cleves by Madame de la Fayette
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
The Princess of Cleves by Madame de la Fayette
The Methods of Lady Walderhurst by Frances Hodgson Burnett
What? Me Read? 