STACKING THE SHELVES | #27-28

It’s time for this week’s WWW Wednesdays, hosted by Should Be Reading blog (head over and check them out!).

This link up asks three questions

• What did you recently finish reading?
• What are you currently reading?
• What do you think you’ll be reading next? 

Here are my WWW answers!

What did I recently finish reading?

 

I missed last week, so here’s the last two weeks in review! I finished We Were Liars in just a couple of days – it’s a quick but darkly intense read that is best gone into with the minimum of information, so that’s all I’ll say on the subject. I subsequently zipped through Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff, the author of one of my favourite bookish books, 84, Charing Cross Road. Which, as you can see, I then re-read because I loved Q so much that I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye to dear Helene. The edition I have also contains The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, which I went on to devour. If you are a fan of books about books and readers (such as The Uncommon Reader and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry), you really ought to acquaint yourself with Helene. She’s a dear literary friend of mine in the sense that her books touched such a chord with me that I cannot ever tire of them. Reading them is much like spending the afternoon at your favourite bookstore with a dear, book-loving friend.

What am I reading now? 

The Goldfinch I’m still chipping away at – I’d put it down for awhile (after getting through the first 150 or so pages in one quick shot over Christmas holidays) and find that I can’t take too much of it at once. Being as it’s around 700 pages long, this might take a while. I’m also dipping in and out of All the Light We Cannot See, which I much enjoy, and The Mockingbird Next Door which I’ve only just begun but am finding quite intriguing. It’s a biography of  Harper Lee, venerable author of that southern American classic, To Kill A Mockingbird. A famous borderline-recluse, Lee hasn’t been given to public appearances, interviews or even further literary pursuits (at least, not published ones). The result being that we collectively know relatively little about the woman who brought us the cultural symbols known as Scout, Jem, Dill and Boo Radley (who was always my favourite, for obvious reasons). There is some debate as to Lee’s level of comfort with (or even awareness of) this book, which has made me feel somewhat conflicted about reading it – but in the end I came down on the side of curiosity and am just hoping that she was, indeed, a willing participant. At any rate, so far it’s a fascinating read.

What do I think I’ll be reading next?

The eternal question, and one I rarely have a satisfactory answer to! You all know that whatever I pick here will most definitely not  be the one I read next, but for the sake of filling in all the blanks, here are a few possibilities! I’m particularly considering re-reading the Adrian Mole books. They’ve been on my mind since Sue Townsend passed away – I realized that not only has it been years since I’ve read them, but that there are at least two books in the series I haven’t read!

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