#WWWWednesday – 9th July 2025

Posted on by whatcathyreadnext

Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:

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

Why not join in too?  Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!

What I’m Currently Reading

I’m listening to the (36 hour long) audiobook of The Mirror & the Light (one of the books on my 20 Books of Summer 2025 list), I’m reading a book from my NetGalley shelf and a review copy.

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel (4th Estate) #20BooksOfSummer25

‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.

Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?

The Last Apartment in Istanbul by Defne Suman (Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

I was writing to her, so that she would know me not as this old person whose joints creaked when he rose from a chair, but as the real the man who dreamt, deceived, envied, loved…

Pericles Drakos has lived in the exquisite Circle Building for all of his seventy-five years. From its lofty windows, he has seen his little corner of Istanbul shift and transform. But as the area has become increasingly gentrified, Pericles has retreated into its shadowy corners. And when the pandemic hits, his isolation deepens.

But when Leyla, a sparky and beautiful thirty-something moves in, Pericles is enthralled. And when he discovers Leyla is a writer, he decides to put his own pen to paper and record his own fraught that of a Greek man subjected to the politics of oppression and intimidation in twentieth-century Turkey.

Green Ink by Stephen May (Swift Press)

David Lloyd George is at Chequers for the weekend with his mistress Frances Stevenson, fretting about the fact that his involvement in selling public honours is about to be revealed by one Victor Grayson. Victor is a bisexual hedonist and former firebrand socialist MP turned secret-service informant. Intent on rebuilding his profile as the leader of the revolutionary Left, he doesn’t know exactly how much of a hornet’s nest he’s stirred up. Doesn’t know that this is, in fact, his last day.

No one really knows what happened to Victor Grayson – he vanished one night in late September 1920, having threatened to reveal all he knew about the prime minister’s involvement in selling honours. Was he murdered by the British government? By enemies in the socialist movement (who he had betrayed in the war)? Did he fall in the Thames drunk? Did he vanish to save his own life, and become an antiques dealer in Kent?

Whatever the truth, Green Ink imagines what might have been with brio, humour and humanity; and is a reminder that the past was once as alive as we are today.

What I’ve Just Read

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton) #20BooksOfSummer25

In a city swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, two young people notice one another.

They share a cup of coffee, a smile, an evening meal. They try not to hear the sound of bombs getting closer every night, the radio announcing new laws, the public executions.

Meanwhile, rumours are spreading of strange black doors in secret places across the city, doors that lead to London or San Francisco, Greece or Dubai. Someday soon, the time will come for this young couple to seek out one such door: joining the multitudes fleeing a collapsing city, hoping against hope, looking for their place in the world. (Review to follow)

What I’ll Be Reading Next

Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee (William Heinemann) #20BooksOfSummer25

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt.

Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past – a journey that can be guided only by one’s conscience.

15 thoughts on “#WWWWednesday – 9th July 2025”

  1. It’s been a deathly week. Every pun intended
    I’m currently reading Indulgence in Death by JD Robb

    I’ve read:

    1 Ritual in Death by JD Robb.
    2 Promises in Death by JD Robb.
    3 Kindred in Death by JD Robb.
    4 Missing in Death by JD Robb.
    5 Fantasy in Death by JD Robb.

    Next up should be a few more In Deaths. Although a new Eve Langlais releases tomorrow so that will be read. Plus a short Murderbot on Friday
    Gill

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  2. What a great range of books. Read Hilary Mantel (and, of course, watched it), just come back from a week in Istanbul and love the sound of the David Lloyd George book. So, books to be added to my TBR list

    Just finished May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes. It won the Women’s Prize for fiction in 2013. Jeanette Winterson called it ‘the great American novel of our time’. Not entirely sure about that but it was gripping. Terrible dark things happen to a family ( it’s not a thriller – we know who does what from the get-go) but it is also very funny. Narrated by a man who has been a bystander in his own life but who has now got to take responsibility for what he has done and the people who are relying on him.

    Listening to My Father’s House by Joseph O Connor. I am going to have buy the book (and the sequel) . The narration is great, no complaints, but the writing is so good and the structure so compelling I want to re-read it. It’s about an Irish priest-hero working in the Vatican during WWII who saves the lives of hundreds of British airmen and Jewish refugees. True story fictionalised. The writing really brings the danger and the ever-present fear to life.

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  3. What a great range of books. Read Hilary Mantel (and, of course, watched it), just come back from a week in Istanbul and love the sound of the David Lloyd George book. So, books to be added to my TBR list

    Just finished May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes. It won the Women’s Prize for fiction in 2013. Jeanette Winterson called it ‘the great American novel of our time’. Not entirely sure about that but it was gripping. Terrible dark things happen to a family ( it’s not a thriller – we know who does what from the get-go) but it is also very funny. Narrated by a man who has been a bystander in his own life but who has now got to take responsibility for what he has done and the people who are relying on him.

    Listening to My Father’s House by Joseph O Connor. I am going to have buy the book (and the sequel) . The narration is great, no complaints, but the writing is so good and the structure so compelling I want to re-read it. It’s about an Irish priest-hero working in the Vatican during WWII who saves the lives of hundreds of British airmen and Jewish refugees. True story fictionalised. The writing really brings the danger and the ever-present fear to life.

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    1. I’ve been saying that for years and I’m finally doing it but it’s going to be along slog. Ages since I took on a book over 800 pages. I watched back the TV dramatisation of the first two books because it was so long ago I read them I needed to remind myself where we’d got to in the story. Answer: Anne Boleyn’s head just chopped off.

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  7. My sister is reading (or has probably just finished reading) this Hilary Mantel book. She was SO fascinated by it, she really surprised me at how much she talked about it. She usually prefers non-fiction, so that was a surprise for me. Enjoy! And as for Go Set a Watchman, I got it as an audiobook and I really enjoyed it. I know it had some controversy, but I didn’t see it that way at all.

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  8. So glad you are reading the last book of this impressive trilogy!
    Last book I finished: A Shilling for Candles, by Josephine Tey
    Am reading: Mishima: A Vision of the Void, by Marguerite Yourcenar
    Am listening to: Angelhunting, by Ji Hong Sayo
    Next: Voici demain, by Valentin Musso

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