Oh, hey, it’s Wednesday again already and time for the usual questions:

• What are you currently reading?
• What have you recently finished reading?
• What are you reading next?

Linking up with Taking on a World of Words.

What are you currently reading?

To be honest, nothing very actively. Each day I’ve been picking something short, usually a manga or a graphic novel, to help me keep up with my reading goals while I’m feeling very snowed under. I’d like to get back to reading Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, by Cat Bohannon, which I’m finding thoughtful and well-framed.

I’m also still partway through rereading The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, but I’ve stalled even with that at this point!

What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I read was a manga called Don’t Call Me Dirty, by Gorou Kanbe, which features a young gay man who ends up falling in love with a homeless man, with some comparison between the social consequences of being gay and the consequences of being homeless. I wasn’t expecting a lot from that, and mostly only picked it up because I got access to it free with a subscription I have, but I actually found it surprisingly touching how the two find common ground.

Before that I read A Kiss, For Real, by Fumie Akuta, which was less my thing — the characterisation of the male lead felt really inconsistent.

What will you be reading next?

I don’t know! I’m half-tempted to read one of the other manga that show up in my subscription: they don’t sound that appealing from the summaries, but sometimes it’s interesting to try things that are a bit out of my comfort zone or usual interests. That’s how I fell in love with the series A Side Character’s Love Story (Akane Tamura), after all!

What have you been reading? I’ll admit, this week I’m a bit overwhelmed, so sorry I’m a bit scarce on answering comments! I’ll answer and visit back soon, I promise.

Oh, hey, it’s Wednesday again already and time for the usual questions:

• What are you currently reading?
• What have you recently finished reading?
• What are you reading next?

Linking up with Taking on a World of Words.

What are you currently reading?

Somewhat on a whim, I started reading George McGavin’s The Hidden World: How Insects Sustain Life On Earth Today and Will Shape Our Lives Tomorrow. Bit of a mouthful, but it tells you most of what you need to know about the book! It’s a bit random in its organisation, like a jumble of all the things McGavin can think to tell people about insects, but there’s some interesting stuff. I want to finish it today.

I’m also a little way into Seanan McGuire’s Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, which feels very much like a direct continuation of Lost in the Moment and Found. Most of these novellas stand alone a little bit, but this one feels like maybe the two should’ve just been one. Anyway, I hope to finish this today too.

What have you recently finished reading?

I think the last thing I finished was Debbie Tung’s Everything Is OK, which is an autobiographical comic about the artist’s journey with anxiety/depression. I think it also tries to be a bit of a general primer on surviving anxiety and depression, at which it fails dramatically through addressing only a very narrow slice of what struggling with mental health is like.

Before that I finished Gina Perry’s The Lost Boys, a look at the psychologist Muzafer Sherif’s life and his Robbers’ Cave experiment. It was not as illuminating as her book on Stanley Milgram, and didn’t feel like it came together as well, but it was interesting.

What are you reading next?

Not sure! I have a few books that I’m technically already partway through which are kind of on the backburner while I finish The Hidden World and Mislaid in Parts Half-Known, so probably I’ll just pick those back up. I’m partway through Ink Blood Sister Scribe (Emma Törzs), which is taking me some time to get into (perhaps mostly just because it’s a little long and I favour short fiction at the moment), and also The Book of Perilous Dishes (Doina Ruști), which I’d like to get back to as well.

There’s always something. What about you?

It’s time for What Are You Reading Wednesday:

• What are you currently reading?
• What have you recently finished reading?
• What are you reading next?

Linking up with Taking on a World of Words.

What are you currently reading?

I got the latest British Library Crime Classic release from my subscription yesterday, so I’ve dived into that! It’s a new E.C.R. Lorac, Impact of Evidence, written under her other pseudonym, Carol Carnac. It’s set on the Welsh borders and has an intriguing set up of a flood, a car accident, and a mysterious extra corpse no one recognises. I want to finish it today!

I’m still reading Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time, which so far has been all about pre-farming societies, and is only just starting to move onto more modern stuff, even though I’m halfway through it. I need to settle down for a longer reading session on this one, I think, else I lose the thread of it.

What have you recently finished reading?

Last thing I finished up was my reread of the second volume of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System (Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù), which… I only read it in January, but I wanted to reread after finishing the last volume because I felt like I’d missed some details. And I definitely had!

Also, my wife’s started reading the series now, finallyyyy. So I have some company in my new obsession, ha.

What are you reading next?

Well… most likely it’ll be the third volume of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, for a start. But I’m also planning to read Seanan McGuire’s Mislaid in Parts Half-Known. It looks like there are dinosaurs, based on the cover?! I want dinosaurs for sure.

Other than that, I’m not sure. Wherever my whim takes me!

How about you, dear reader? What are you currently reading?

It’s Wednesday, so as ever, it’s time to answer the three Ws:

• What are you currently reading?
• What have you recently finished reading?
• What are you reading next?

And linking up with Taking on a World of Words.

What are you currently reading?

Actually, nothing very actively, after I finished a book last night. I’m partway through a few books at once, but paused due to them not fitting the mood. I’m most likely to get back to The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, by Bettany Hughes, but that’s quite a slow read and one that I’m taking in bits.

The other thing I’ll probably get back to sooner rather than later is Juliet E. McKenna’s The Cleaving, an Arthurian retelling from the point of view of Nimue. I’m very interested in what it’ll do with that, since I studied Arthurian literature back at Cardiff University (and wrote my MA dissertation on it as well as numerous assignments).

What have you recently finished reading?

Last night I finished up reading Margot Bennett’s Someone from the Past which… I really didn’t like. The main character makes the most absurd decisions, and the author spends a lot of time lingering on wannabe-witty dialogue. It’s snappy enough up to a point, but then you realise they’re getting absolutely nowhere and you’ve read three pages of little substance. The main character thinks she’s clever and she really, really isn’t.

Plus, it ends with two characters getting together in a way that just feels as disastrous as everything else the main character has done. I’ll save the in-depth analysis for my review, I guess, but ugh.

What are you reading next?

Excellent question! I’m honestly really tempted to do some rereading — and not even of something I read a while ago, but of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System. I feel like there’s a lot that I missed, and having finished all four volumes (and watched the donghua, via a fan translation) I’d have a better appreciation of some of the stuff that was bewildering at first.

But I’ve only just finished those, so probably I’ll stick to the reading list I set myself at the start of the week. Most likely I’ll read Lost in the Moment and Found (Seanan McGuire), or System Collapse (Martha Wells). I’ve been meaning to catch up with both of those for a while now!

What about you? What are you currently reading? Anything exciting on your upcoming TBR?