WWW Wednesday #2

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Dude, is it Wednesday already?  I nearly forgot, but since I remembered, here it is, the meme hosted by Sam at A World of Words.  Very simple, just answer me these questions three, ere the other side you see:


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

What are you currently reading?
 
Secondhand Time, by Svetlana Alexievich.  Memories of the 1990s and the end of the USSR, from former Soviets.  Fascinating, very long, often quite nostalgic for the glories of the Revolution, or alternatively for the glories of the days when freedom seemed right around the corner.  Instead they got rampant commercialism, oligarchy, and a new dictator, which is not what democracy or even capitalism is about.  Russians really got the shaft with that 'shock therapy' idea where they just gave away entire industries to various moguls.
I started Hartmann von Aue all right, but I haven't gotten far at all.  I keep falling asleep, so I've moved it out of the bedtime reading spot to the coffee table.





What did you recently finish reading?
 
Just finished The Adventures of Roderick Random.  All the good guys end up filthy rich, and all the baddies end up poor, in the best approved Georgian fashion.  You have to love their straightforward interest in money!
 
I also finished an Angolan novel, The Book of Chameleons, by Jose Eduardo Agualusa.  There are no actual, non-metaphorical chameleons, but there is a gecko.
 
 
What do you think you’ll read next?
 
I'm planning to start The Wanderer, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry and riddles.  And I think I'll read Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn; I don't quite want to start either the Trollope or the Camus quite yet.  I'll read something just for fun first.
 
 
 
 
 

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