While I’ve done a horrible job this past week of accomplishing much reading, I do need to update my readers of my progress. Maybe that will inspire me to stop gluing myself to the stressful, all consuming election coverage and get me to focus. This is my third installment of the weekly WWW series hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. In each post, answer the three questions below and leave a link to your post in the comments for others to enjoy. This way we can all experience what our peers are enjoying in the wonderful world of books. Let’s dive in!

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 The Women of the Copper Country by Mary Doria Russell. This book falls into the “books I own so I’m constantly putting them down to read my library holds” category. I’m enjoying it greatly, however, and plan on buckling back down with it when I finish the super short next read I picked up from the library. Honestly, this is a really great read to experience during the current stressful political climate, because it hails back to an era in history in which American citizens used political power to fight for their rights as American workers. There’s a very rich and vital narrative to the labor movement in the United States.

As previously mentioned, many reads come available at the library to distract me, and that place this week goes to In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. This is a super short but profound memoir that’s told in a very unique style. It consists of a series of very short vignettes outlining a toxic relationship. My initial impression is that this is a very effective technique. Each vignette intimately shows a specific experience from the author’s life, some which led her to her partner and some that she experienced with her. It’s an excellent mimicry of the way relationships actually develop. Every experience with a person brings us closer to understanding them, like peeling away layers of them until they become fully formed. Sometimes these layers are positive, but we often find ourselves uncovering less than ideal parts of them.

On audio, I’m doing my second book by author Corban Addison. The first I read was A Walk Across the Sun. It’s been 8 years since I read this title, but I never forgot how immensely beautiful it is. It gave me an urge to read more by Addison, but it’s also difficult to pick one up, because he writes about extremely heavy topics. So reader beware, Addison is an author to follow, but while he enriches and enlightens your mind he will leave you with a heavy heart. However, I feel the problem I see in the world is too many people are closing themselves off to the suffering of others, which leaves humans as empty soulless shells devoid of empathy. We need the hard stuff. I’ve now picked up The Tears of Dark Water. I won’t speak much about it yet, because I just started the book, but so far it has the expert prose I’d expect from Addison and it’s immediately engaging.

Recently Finished:

I recently finished Cold Storage by David Koepp. A bit gross but wildly engaging, and the audio is an entertaining narration by Rupert Friend. You can find my review of this title here.

What Will I Read Next?

You might get a bit of deja vu with this one, but I still have yet to start the title I cited in my last WWW post two weeks ago (yes, I failed to get one done last week). So I’ll reiterate that I still plan on picking up Liane Moriarty’s The Hypnotist’s Love Story. But, you will eventually realize it’s a very bad idea for me to plan ahead with my reads, because it’s quite common for me to change my mind at the last minute.

So, there you have it! Those are my plans for the next week’s reading. What will you be reading? Feel free to share your post here or tell me your selections in the comments. Have you read any of these? I’d love to hear your input. Look for my review of In the Dream House to pop up possibly tomorrow. Until then, Happy Reading!